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Cherron
Sarah hated them all—her horrible parents, her spiteful brothers and sisters, the entire Bankroft family. She heard their taunting laughter, their vicious lies, echoing through the dark halls of Cherron. Someday they'd pay for the way they'd treated her. Someday they'd be sorry. Then it happened. Sarah discovered that, by thinking very hard, she could make things happen...scary things...dangerous things. Now she had a power no one could take away—or control. Now it was time for vengeance.
314 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 31, 2023
Decent, Zebra early 80s horror pulp, but nothing really very special. Cherron is the name of a tobacco plantation in North Florida, ancestral home of the beautiful and wealthy Bankroft family. Our main protagonist, Sarah Bankroft, grew up as the ugly duckling of the family, constantly being derided by her parents and siblings for being ugly and plain. Only her cousin Martin was kind to her...
We get the back story in many flashbacks, but the tale starts with an author writing a book on the 'great families' of Florida and of course he wants to interview the Bankrofts. Of the Bankrofts, very few are left after a few years of 'tragedy', with the patriarchs all dying one after another and Sarah's siblings going the same way. Sarah has assumed the role of running the plantation, along with Martin as her assistant, and the only other living Bankrofts are Sarah's deeply traumatized aunt and nephew who live at Cherron and her uncle, a doctor in town. Jonathan, the author, starts by asking around town about the Bankrofts, who were almost universally reviled due to their snobbishness, except everyone seems to love Miss Sarah. Jonathan, with his investigator's curiosity, keeps asking questions, and maybe he stumbled across something ugly, even as he falls in love with Sarah...
Cherron has a few neat twists, but really, this is straight up pulp with some 'mind power' circa 1980 tossed in. Further, it badly needs a good copy editor at least. If you manage to find a copy, it may be worth a read, but I would only recommend it to 80s Zebra horror fans. 2.5 stars, rounding up because it is set in Florida.
We get the back story in many flashbacks, but the tale starts with an author writing a book on the 'great families' of Florida and of course he wants to interview the Bankrofts. Of the Bankrofts, very few are left after a few years of 'tragedy', with the patriarchs all dying one after another and Sarah's siblings going the same way. Sarah has assumed the role of running the plantation, along with Martin as her assistant, and the only other living Bankrofts are Sarah's deeply traumatized aunt and nephew who live at Cherron and her uncle, a doctor in town. Jonathan, the author, starts by asking around town about the Bankrofts, who were almost universally reviled due to their snobbishness, except everyone seems to love Miss Sarah. Jonathan, with his investigator's curiosity, keeps asking questions, and maybe he stumbled across something ugly, even as he falls in love with Sarah...
Cherron has a few neat twists, but really, this is straight up pulp with some 'mind power' circa 1980 tossed in. Further, it badly needs a good copy editor at least. If you manage to find a copy, it may be worth a read, but I would only recommend it to 80s Zebra horror fans. 2.5 stars, rounding up because it is set in Florida.
January 14, 2024
This book is trying to be scary with some weird incest thrown in. The story was just ok and I felt it repeated a lot. I thought the plot was very predictable but it kept me reading enough to want to finish the story. I'm more into scary extreme horror and this just wasn't even a little bit scary in the least. More of a Soap opera with killer fish thrown in.
January 12, 2012
Cherron made for an entertaining read, but it would have benefited from a skilled editor. Repeating entire paragraphs of the plot toward the end of the book -- twice -- doesn't really do much for continuity or readability.
June 13, 2024
I'm giving this book four stars based on entertainment value alone. Other people have compared it to "Stephen King's 'Carrie' as written by V.C. Andrews" but the Southern Gothic melodrama is cranked up to 11 here, and we're on a wild ride.
To begin with is the most amazing prologue I've read in a long time concerning a pool of sentient man-eating piranhas, who not only respond orgiastically to the sounds of human screams, but have taste buds that can discern and prefer "soft and plump" human female flesh over the "tough and muscular" flesh of men. These piranhas are the epicures of the domestic piscine world, apparently.
We eventually learn that these are the pets of one Miss Sarah Bankroft, the sole heir to a massively successful North Florida tobacco plantation called Cherron. She's the sole heir because she killed, maimed, or zombiefied all of the other relatives who were mean to her. This meanness involved her snobbish family constantly telling her she was too ugly and fat, preventing her from going to parties, threatening to send her away to boarding school so they wouldn't have to be embarrassed by her looks, and wanting to forbid her incestuous affair with her first cousin Martin. Eh, I was raised in an abusive household but I never developed telekinetic powers, nor did I kill my parents by magically poisoning their mushroom omelettes, or telepathically cause my uncle's plane to explode in mid-air, or throw my brother into the mouth of an alligator. I just went no contact with my family. But you do you, Sarah.
As a child, ugly, fat, unloved Sarah had no friends except for the local swamp witch. (And her cousin Martin, who first got it on with her in a barn during a hurricane.) Yes, really. The swamp witch helps her discover her full powers, which not only include telekinesis but the ability to control weather, read minds and influence thoughts, and to change physical appearances including her own. So of course over time Sarah magically transforms herself into a stunning beauty who's beloved by everyone in town, and curses those she dislikes by driving them insane, giving them a plague of boils, mutilating them in a car accident, etc. Some of her victims she dumps into her piranha pool, then uses their leftover bones as fertilizer for her prize-winning rose garden. As one does.
Oh, but the swamp witch wasn't helping Sarah out of the goodness of her heart. She was using her as a pawn to gain access to become the mistress of Cherron herself. Le gasp! This betrayal will not stand! Begin the swamp witch battle! Only one walks away! The other succumbs to a literal acid rain attack and melts appropriately.
After all those pesky people are disposed of, things are smooth sailing at the Cherron plantation until a handsome young writer named Jonathan comes to town to do a biography of Sarah's prominent and tragic family. As expected, he digs a little too deeply into dangerous family secrets, and a love triangle forms between him, Sarah, and cousin-lover Martin. Jonathan becomes a little too curious about what's being kept in the basement, and about the town rumors of grave robbers in the Bankroft family mausoleum. Suffice to say that even though Sarah killed her family, she...wasn't quite willing to let them go. She's a lot like Norman Bates in this respect. And she won't let go of Cherron or Martin, no matter how much Jonathan wants to marry her and take her back with him to New York.
Who lives? Who dies? Who's cursed with incurable pruritus for daring to try to grow roses better than Sarah's? Get yourself a copy of this Zebra Books classic and strap yourself in for the ride.
To begin with is the most amazing prologue I've read in a long time concerning a pool of sentient man-eating piranhas, who not only respond orgiastically to the sounds of human screams, but have taste buds that can discern and prefer "soft and plump" human female flesh over the "tough and muscular" flesh of men. These piranhas are the epicures of the domestic piscine world, apparently.
We eventually learn that these are the pets of one Miss Sarah Bankroft, the sole heir to a massively successful North Florida tobacco plantation called Cherron. She's the sole heir because she killed, maimed, or zombiefied all of the other relatives who were mean to her. This meanness involved her snobbish family constantly telling her she was too ugly and fat, preventing her from going to parties, threatening to send her away to boarding school so they wouldn't have to be embarrassed by her looks, and wanting to forbid her incestuous affair with her first cousin Martin. Eh, I was raised in an abusive household but I never developed telekinetic powers, nor did I kill my parents by magically poisoning their mushroom omelettes, or telepathically cause my uncle's plane to explode in mid-air, or throw my brother into the mouth of an alligator. I just went no contact with my family. But you do you, Sarah.
As a child, ugly, fat, unloved Sarah had no friends except for the local swamp witch. (And her cousin Martin, who first got it on with her in a barn during a hurricane.) Yes, really. The swamp witch helps her discover her full powers, which not only include telekinesis but the ability to control weather, read minds and influence thoughts, and to change physical appearances including her own. So of course over time Sarah magically transforms herself into a stunning beauty who's beloved by everyone in town, and curses those she dislikes by driving them insane, giving them a plague of boils, mutilating them in a car accident, etc. Some of her victims she dumps into her piranha pool, then uses their leftover bones as fertilizer for her prize-winning rose garden. As one does.
Oh, but the swamp witch wasn't helping Sarah out of the goodness of her heart. She was using her as a pawn to gain access to become the mistress of Cherron herself. Le gasp! This betrayal will not stand! Begin the swamp witch battle! Only one walks away! The other succumbs to a literal acid rain attack and melts appropriately.
After all those pesky people are disposed of, things are smooth sailing at the Cherron plantation until a handsome young writer named Jonathan comes to town to do a biography of Sarah's prominent and tragic family. As expected, he digs a little too deeply into dangerous family secrets, and a love triangle forms between him, Sarah, and cousin-lover Martin. Jonathan becomes a little too curious about what's being kept in the basement, and about the town rumors of grave robbers in the Bankroft family mausoleum. Suffice to say that even though Sarah killed her family, she...wasn't quite willing to let them go. She's a lot like Norman Bates in this respect. And she won't let go of Cherron or Martin, no matter how much Jonathan wants to marry her and take her back with him to New York.
Who lives? Who dies? Who's cursed with incurable pruritus for daring to try to grow roses better than Sarah's? Get yourself a copy of this Zebra Books classic and strap yourself in for the ride.
July 12, 2022
Incest, lots of body shaming.
The story kept me curious up to the end but I don’t really feel satisfied with how it ended. 🤷♀️
There was so much emphasis placed on Sarah not wanting to control Jonathan that it felt really glossed over at the end, did she control him or had he done a complete personality reversal? The personality you get of him throughout the book doesn’t fit the ending but there’s no clear follow up on whether Sarah took over or he made that choice for himself. I guess I’m assuming that she took him over, maybe because Martin died and it fits Sarah’s character that she needs to have someone as a companion. But I’m surprised that she seems to have no emotions over that decision. She struggled with both herself and Martin over it through a good portion of the book so that particular arc seemed to lack follow-through and took away from the overall effect.
While there’s a brief conversation between her and Jonathan, I think the ending could have used a follow up internal piece with Sarah. What did she have to do to get Jonathan on her side? If she had to completely take over does she feel any sense of loss about that? Or does she feel she won? How does she feel about Martin and now having Jonathan, especially if she had to completely take him over when Martin just accepted anything she did of his own volition? I think a recap from her could have added that “idyllic chill” quality to the story and upped the creep factor, instead the ending kind of fell flat.
Also I kept waiting for the fish to…have a bigger role in the story? They were initially written like they were sentient so I kept wondering if they were some kind of supernatural deadly fish - which sounds hella dumb when I write it here but maybe don’t write a section from the fish’s perspective then! 🐠
The story kept me curious up to the end but I don’t really feel satisfied with how it ended. 🤷♀️
There was so much emphasis placed on Sarah not wanting to control Jonathan that it felt really glossed over at the end, did she control him or had he done a complete personality reversal? The personality you get of him throughout the book doesn’t fit the ending but there’s no clear follow up on whether Sarah took over or he made that choice for himself. I guess I’m assuming that she took him over, maybe because Martin died and it fits Sarah’s character that she needs to have someone as a companion. But I’m surprised that she seems to have no emotions over that decision. She struggled with both herself and Martin over it through a good portion of the book so that particular arc seemed to lack follow-through and took away from the overall effect.
While there’s a brief conversation between her and Jonathan, I think the ending could have used a follow up internal piece with Sarah. What did she have to do to get Jonathan on her side? If she had to completely take over does she feel any sense of loss about that? Or does she feel she won? How does she feel about Martin and now having Jonathan, especially if she had to completely take him over when Martin just accepted anything she did of his own volition? I think a recap from her could have added that “idyllic chill” quality to the story and upped the creep factor, instead the ending kind of fell flat.
Also I kept waiting for the fish to…have a bigger role in the story? They were initially written like they were sentient so I kept wondering if they were some kind of supernatural deadly fish - which sounds hella dumb when I write it here but maybe don’t write a section from the fish’s perspective then! 🐠
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 2, 2022
It wasn't bad but it wasn't good. I don't agree with the reviews that say it's a lot like Carrie, I mean it's nothing like it. The incest thing being such a huge part of the book was really weird.
October 27, 2020
A snoozefest and a complete ripoff of "Carrie" by Stephen King.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews