Mr. Lacer and the kids were away in Northampton this weekend whilst I stayed at home and worked. In between working I devoured the audiobook of Joe Hill’s Horns and it was absolutely wonderful. Horns features Ig, the boyfriend and only suspect in the murder of Merrin, who died a year earlier, brutally raped and murdered. Thing is, although everyone believes Ig did it, he didn’t and his life goes from ruin to ruin until one day, after a drunken evening at the site of his girlfriend’s murder, Ig wakes up to find he has horns growing out of his head and not only that, when people see him, they feel compelled to tell him their darkest thoughts.
Horns follows Ig as he discovers his powers, discovers who really did kill Merrin and we go back in time to discover how the relationship between Ig and Merrin developed. We see the story from several people’s viewpoints and Hill does a really good job in getting into the head of the real murderer because like a lot of bad guys, the murderer doesn’t really see what he’s doing is wrong, instead having a whole array of ‘good reasons’ for his actions. So consequently the murderer was incredibly creepy.
Although Horns is billed as a horror story, the detail in the story isn’t that horrific (as in gory, with extreme detail) and I think instead it’s an interesting take on a romance crossed with a moralistic story crossed with a story about what happens to the families of the murder victim and the ‘murderer’ after the murder itself. Definitely my favourite book of the year so far, can’t wait to read more Joe Hill.
