Book Review: Off Season

OFF SEASON | Jack Ketchum
1980 | 47North
5/5 stars

September. A beautiful New York editor retreats to a lonely cabin on a hill in the quiet Maine beach town of Dead River—off season—awaiting her sister and friends. Nearby, a savage human family with a taste for flesh lurks in the darkening woods, watching, waiting for the moon to rise and night to fall. And before too many hours pass, five civilized, sophisticated people and one tired old country sheriff will learn just how primitive we all are beneath the surface…and that there are no limits at all to the will to survive.

Is it weird to say that a book about cannibals might be one of my favorites I’ve read this year??

OFF SEASON is absolutely brutal, but somehow addictive to read. It’s like one of those horror movies that you watch through your fingers as you cover your eyes in disgust. There are very few books that have genuinely scared me and this falls at the top of the stack. Something about Ketchum’s writing kept me wanting to pick this one up and binge read chunks of it. I was fascinated, disgusted, and on the edge of my seat to see what would happen. 

There are a lot of trigger warnings for this book, so as always I suggest heading over to Storygraph for a full list.