From the Bookshelf of Splatterpunk…

Off Season (Dead River, #1)

Jack Ketchum

Start date: August 1, 2024

Finish date: August 31, 2024

Discussion: Group Reads

Why we're reading this: This is the August 2024 poll winner.
[close] This is the August 2024 poll winner.

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Group Reads

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What Members Thought

Jun 12, 2016 Pisces51 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2024

I read “Off Season” last week for the third time. The impetus for my reading it again was that I had voted for it in the polls on Splatterpunk Book Club to select the books for their group read competition for August. Most fans of horror, and particularly readers who gravitate more toward extreme horror, are familiar with the name Jack Ketchum. It was the pen name of Dallas William Mayr, an American horror fiction author. Fans may be unaware of the degree that Ketchum’s work was celebrated. More ...more

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May 03, 2010 Kasia rated it really liked it

This was my first Ketchum book and I cannot wait to read the follow up to Off Season, chillingly called Offspring. This tale is pretty simple as it deals with civilized humans and with some barbarians who speak and think but who choose to stalk and watch their prey before they make their surprise attack. This is not savagery fueled by regular hunger, this is deep and evil lust for causing pain and cruelty to the innocent in the most excruciating manners possible, this is the tale of the Off Seas This was my first Ketchum book and I cannot wait to read the follow up to Off Season, chillingly called Offspring. This tale is pretty simple as it deals with civilized humans and with some barbarians who speak and think but who choose to stalk and watch their prey before they make their surprise attack. This is not savagery fueled by regular hunger, this is deep and evil lust for causing pain and cruelty to the innocent in the most excruciating manners possible, this is the tale of the Off Season and the harvest of souls that soon follows.

When Carla retreats to an isolated cabin in the midst of a quiet Maine town she has in mind some book editing along with a nice relaxing week in the company of her sister Marjorie and her boyfriend Dan. Along for the ride came Jim, Carla's handsome but not emotional new hunky boyfriend as well as her ex Nick and his new air head of a girlfriend Laura. Carla has a whole day to herself to clean and refresh the whole cabin before her company, as the off season in the small town of Dead River provides nothing but fresh air and beautiful views of forests and nearby cliffs above a chillingly green sea.

She has no idea but her steps have all ready been entangled in a slowly spinning game of cat and mouse. She is being slowly watched by a savage family that lives in the nearby coastal rocky cave and they are not simple dirty humans who feed on scraps and peek through windows, they are something much darker and hungrier than the wildest animals she could have crossed paths with. What Carla and her company have in store is beyond what many people can handle hearing about, and this is where the book plunges from serene scenery and character development into a black nightmare of infinite proportions that seems to have no way out but through the dark and hungry jaws of the savages.

When the civilizations collide and the city dwellers get a nasty shock of reality, they have very little time to absorb the impact of being attacked and hunted by a rabid pack of humans who have a growing appetite for human flesh as it fills them with power and fuels their barbaric primordial magic. In the middle of the night while making love to Jim, Carla finds herself drowning in his blood as an attack through the window takes over her serene world and she is pulled out of the house naked, in the middle of the night with children and dirty men and women dressed in skins clawing at her muscles, wanting to absorb her flesh and her vital energy. The battle for life and death begins as the sleepy vacationers are roused to screams and sounds of violent trashing about the house. A few of them meet a grim and gristly fate at the hands of barbaric and ferocious people that live in a black cave filled with skulls and clothing and a big metal cage that is literally their place for incoming meals.

With the characters battling for their lives and few of them brutally eaten, Ketchum hooks and sinks the reader with his infinite morbid descriptions of cannibalism and the undying will to survive that is the only shining light the prey has left. I was engrossed and scared to turn the page but the book was one that sucked me in, I felt like turning to the last page more than once just to see who could have possible came out alive out of this disgusting battle but I'm glad I read it and got to the ending, which was bittersweet and explosive.

- Kasia S. ...more

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Aug 14, 2024 Charlene (Char)🍁☕️📚 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

One Night

Wow
Even after reading this book it still lingers.
This book was selected for my monthly August read and this was a great selection. I have read Jack Ketchum before but I can honestly say this book is definitely unhinged. This book was a slow burn for me slow at some parts but when the action started I was held captive. This book is about a woman who has a cabin in the woods to meet a deadline and have a nice vacation. So she decides to invite her sister, her friends and ex what could po ...more

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Oct 10, 2021 Karisa rated it really liked it

I loved this book BUT nothing really even happens until 45% of the way through. I dragged ass the whole first boring half of the book and then sped through the last half because I couldn’t get enough of it.

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