I received this one from Netgalley/publisher in exchange of an honest review.

A guy who returns to his hometown, or well, home island given that the place is named after his family, finds out that sometimes you should just leave mysterious things to their own, haha. I did like Mark Turner though, he did some dumb things, but I did like that he was trying to make his place on this island despite the hostility from the people living there (later we learn why everyone seems to hate the Turners so much, which I really liked that we got that backstory). I was a bit on the fence about him turning a church into a home though, but I was still curious what he would make of it. He was quite resilient (or is it stubborn?). A lot of people would just have said fuck it to the home feeling and left to other better places.

But during a drunk stupor (which I didn’t blame him for at all, I mean, if that happened and all the pent up stuff as well) he opens something horrific. Or well, what comes out of the box is not really the one they should fear I guess, but along with that monster (named Brynmore) comes something full of curse. Something deadly. Something will rise from the ground and the water and it will take whatever comes in their path. It was totally epic to see several town’s folk I didn’t like get their dues. I am sorry, not the good thoughts, but I was just so pissed at how the people treated Turner. Yes, his ancestors sucked, but Mark seems to be a nice guy. Come on. It was gruesome to see what happened to the people out on the streets, and how more and more dead just seemed to come to earth to do some murder. And it was epic to see Turner, his daughter, and new friends try to fix the problem. Try to make sure that everything is safe again.

But the ending just felt kinda sudden. We went from murderous spree and danger and OMG we are all dying to OK, case is closed. Done. Hop. It just felt very anticlimactic. I would have just liked a bit more to it. See how the town is doing. See who is still alive and who is dead. See them build up again. That kind of stuff.

I also found it odd that our MC just let his teen daughter come to live with him. I mean, I get it, her mom isn’t the best apparently and she needed her dad, but he had ZERO living space + a dead demon wandering around. WTF?

The art was pretty good though, the monsters/demons/dead peeps were well drawn. The illustrator sure got the right atmosphere!

All in all, despite being disappointed at some points, I am still very happy I read this one because it was quite the ride.