Title and author: Purity by Douglas Clegg

Genre: Horror…sort of

What led you to pick up the book? It was in the first set of e-books I bought through StoryBundle . It was a great deal on several horror/fantasy books, which is a genre I’m trying to become more familiar with.

Summarize the plot without revealing the ending. A boy,Owen, living on a small island meets and begins worshipping a Lovecraftian monster. He asks only one thing: for the girl that he sees only at the summers. He loves her when he first sees her. She is purity.

The summer after the both of them finish high school, she shows up on the island with a boy. A boy who is moneyed and self-assured. And very possessive of the girl.

Owen knows this is wrong-Jimmy should not have Jenna. Jenna has always been his. So he formulates a plan.

What did you like most? I’m still getting to grips with horror as a genre and am recovering from my literary fiction snobbishness, so I liked (was surprised by) how well it was written. The writing wasn’t luminous, but I also have no complaints, which is saying something. I enjoyed the plot, which I thought was going to be predictable but turned out to be anything but. The general tone was Lovecraftian at times. The tone also reminded me of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History in that there’s a coldness to the protagonist, who is also trying to fit in with a set of privileged teens.

Also, the story is told from four different points of view and each character, when narrating, had their own voice. This is difficult to do and Clegg handled it well. He also captured the variety of forces at work on hormonal teenage boys and the ways those forces manifest in a way that felt organic.

What did you dislike? Whilst the writing is fine overall, there are some clumsy phrases. ‘Spring shat out of winter in New England,’ springs to mind.

Give an opinion on the ending Surprising. It did not go the way I’d thought it would do (in a good way). I also liked that we’re never told if the boy’s god from the deeps, Dagon, is really exerting force in his life or if it’s all in his head. And I do love unreliable narrators.

Overall Rating: 7/10