Title: No Road Home
Author: John Fram
Publication Date: July 23, 2024 by Atria Books
Genres: Horror
Protagonist Gender: Male
No Road Home was a dark, creepy, atmospheric work of supernatural-laced horror with enough hate-worthy characters to carry the weight of reader anger, and just enough tolerable characters to do the same for reader sympathy. For the most part, this was a solid 5-star read, one that kept me reading late into the night. It captured my imagination, played upon my emotions, and triggered my intellectual curiosity.
I picked this up knowing nothing about John Fram, but the blurb sounded almost as if the book were written for me - a young father, his queer son, and a murdered televangelist, complete with family's dangerous, a freak storm, and a spectral figure in a black suit - but I feel like it went even deeper than that. I was already prepared to loathe the Wright family, but their brutal hypocrisy and petty infighting added an element of glee to watching their house come tumbling down. They're such a melodramatic group, like a family from a gothic soap opera, and the house is a suitably creepy maze of forbidden wings and locked doors. Add in the threats scrawled in blood-red lettering, the torn-up mysterious notes, and the conveniently interrupted would-be-confessions, and this is a book to keep you guessing and engaged.
So why just a 5-star read for the most part? The climax goes on for far too long, dragging out what should have been a tight, powerful, confrontational finale. After being a single-POV story for 85% of the read, it suddenly leaps into multiple POVs, with their narratives overlapping, to show every single part of the resolution when some would have been fine left to tell. Finally, after a prolonged (sometimes tiresome) theme of locked doors and repressed memories, we find out our narrator isn't as reliable as he seems, and the big secret/spoiler feels like a cheat, given he knew it all along.
One thing I will say for the story is that it avoids the tendency toward children who turn out to be special in some way, supernaturally destined to save the day. At the same time, it gives Luca enough personality to make him and his queerness more than just a plot device, although I wish we'd gotten to see more of him prior to the climax. No Road Home was a really good read that could have been great, but that's a comment, not a complaint.
Rating: ♀ ♀ ♀ ♀
My sincere thanks to the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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