Young Adult Fiction Books: Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

ISBN-13: 9780575081871
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2008
403 pgs

Judas Coyne is not your typical hero as you read from other thriller/horror novels. For starters, he is an ageing metal rock star, but the most intriguing thing about him is he collects macabre stuff. For example, he has framed sketches of the seven dwarves on the wall of his studio, and he has the skull of a peasant who had been trepanned in the sixteenth century etc etc. It all seem very bizarre but Judas has no qualms about his weird collection at all, until his assistant, Danny Wooten, told him that there was a ghost for sale on the internet.

When Judas heard of it, he just knew this would be another great addition to his collection. He bought it and chuck the thought out of his mind. When a black, heart-shaped box arrives in the mail, Judas is perplexed to find nothing but a black and old-fashioned suit. It then struck him that this was a purchase he had made not too long ago and he called it 'the dead man's suit'. As indicated, there is nothing ordinary about this suit as it comes with a vengeful spirit. It turns out that the ghost, Craddock McDermott, is the stepfather of a girl who committed suicide after Judas had played and dumped her.

And this leads to a terrifying hide-and-seek between Judas and Craddock, as well as a woman named Marybeth since she is living with Judas and like him, she has a fancy for anything gothic. Craddock is determined to track them down and since he has got a knack of hypnotising people when he was alive, he intends to use his every power to drive Judas to the edge of sanity. And anyone who is helping Judas would not be spared either.

However, that is not all to this story. Judas also found out more things about Anna, the suicidal girl he once loved and left, and her relationship between her sister and Craddock as well.

No doubt Heart-Shaped Box is a horror story through and through, but it is also an engaging character drive story that makes you feel for the characters, especially for Anna. I am not going to spoil the story for you but if you read this book, you would be able to know about her history and how (why) this horror story begins.

Aside from The Ghost Writer, Heart-Shaped Box is another creepy book I read thus far this year; I would not recommend this book to anyone who is squeamish about blood and all (though I think some of those scenes are inevitable). Then again, Heart-Shaped Box is not entirely a story about ghost and revenge, it also touches issue like abuse and the human sentimentality which I think can be scarier than the ghost itself.

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