Book Review: Misfits by Hunter Shea
Spoiler Warning: There is a clearly noted paragraph towards the end of this review that contains spoilers. We asterisked and bolded the spoiler text before and after so you can easily scroll past!
Hunter Shea is an author I very much admire, having read Creature and Ghost Mine, which I really enjoyed. His writing is crisp, and he’s brilliant when it comes to underlying horror, of building tension in his prose before the gore kicks in. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed by Misfits. I’ll admit, in part this kind of horror just isn’t my style, as I’m finding more and more. With many books like this, I know there will be many who really appreciate what Shea does here, and will get far more enjoyment out of this than I did.
Misfits takes us back to the 90s grunge era, and focuses on five friends on the fringes of society. Mick, Marnie, Chuck, Heidi and Vent are as close as friends could be, which is good because they all need help looking out for one another. Towards the start of the novel (and it’s mentioned in the blurb so isn’t a spoiler, but definite trigger warning for sexual assault required) Marnie is raped by her ex-boyfriend’s father.
Shea doesn’t handle this poorly, as such, and throughout the book we see Marnie’s resilience and determination. But what happens to her is used as a kicking off point, and as a result, Mick decides he will feed her attacker to the Melon Heads. Essentially, he wants to use them to kill this man in the most brutal way possible. The reasonings are fair: as outcasts, and as Marnie is a teenage girl, they won’t be listened to. The adults who are supposed to protect them won’t. And the moments when Marnie and Heidi talk, when Marnie admits why she won’t tell others, ring really true. These parts are handled really well, and these are the moments I found myself connecting to.
But when they do try to lure out the Melon Heads, things go horribly wrong, and start a chain of events that see the five friends pushed even further.
Again, there are elements of the book I really liked. But the most part, the rampage and carnage that takes up the bulk just wasn’t for me. A lot of it felt a little samey, and when there were deaths, I found it a bit hard to connect emotionally with what was happening, unlike my previous experiences with Shea’s work.
I usually try really hard to avoid spoilers in my reviews, but I really, really need to talk about the ending. More trigger warnings for sexual assault after this point.
***SPOILERS***
To me, when a book is such a mixed bag as I found Misfits to be, the ending can definitely tip it one way or another. And the ending here tipped the book the complete wrong way. Marnie’s attack and the infection that follows leaves her childless. As we hit the climax, the characters find themselves caught by the Melon Heads. They meet the leader, who is as ‘deformed’ as the others, but she is described as still being ‘all woman’. She gets naked in front of the teenagers, and guess what? Her body is beautiful. She is hairless. Without going into too much detail, what follows this almost feels like Shea was trying to bring the story full circle. A male character is forced into acts against his will, but he must comply to save his friends. His saved friends never really move on with their lives, but they come back to visit, and find Mick with his own children. There’s nothing wrong with that, as such, but it just felt…a little icky to me, a little too on the nose, in contrast to Marnie who is portrayed as never really getting over her past and Mick.
***END SPOILERS***
So, yeah. A bit more to unpack that I really intended with this review, but in all honesty, I don’t shy away from most things in horror, and I was really excited to read this new release by Shea. I want to restate – his writing is good, my dislike is tied into my personal preferences. I do feel for the most part he handled the aftermath of the attack on Marnie quite well. Unfortunately, there was just more than made me uncomfortable than not with other elements of the book.
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Grade: D
Review by Elle Turpitt
I received this book from publisher Flame Tree Press for review consideration.
