⭐️⭐️⭐️½
Peter Clines has such a signature style, and The Off Season is a perfect example of what he does so well: blend genres in a way that keeps the story moving. I was initially drawn to this one by that fantastic cover, but once I started reading, I was quickly pulled into the story itself.
This is definitely horror, but like a lot of really good horror, it doesn’t come charging out of the gate as a full-on slasher. What makes a Peter Clines novel different, though, is that the journey toward the horror never really feels like a traditional slow burn. Instead of simply waiting for things to get progressively creepier, you’re having an adventure along the way. There’s action, mystery, and a constant sense of momentum before the horror elements really take over.
Ben Getty is a disgraced LAPD officer who has essentially been banished to rural Maine, where he’s been given another chance as a police officer in the tiny town of Little Enoch. Unfortunately, there’s also the small matter of a serial killer who has been hunting in the surrounding woods for decades. The killings stretch all the way back to a massacre at a summer camp fifty years earlier—which raises some pretty obvious questions. Is this really the same killer? Has this person just been wandering around the Maine woods murdering people for half a century? And if so…how old is this guy now?!
That mystery is part of what makes the book so much fun.
I ultimately landed at 3.5 stars. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and even when the story hadn’t reached its full horror mode yet, I was entertained. Clines is particularly good at writing books that refuse to stay neatly inside one genre, and The Off Season delivers that combination of mystery, adventure, action, and horror that I’ve come to associate with his work.
The Off Season publishes April 20, 2027. (Macmillan)
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an electronic advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review.
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