Book Review: Old Country

OLD COUNTRY | Matt Query & Harrison Query
07.26.2022 | Grand Central Publishing
Rating: 3/5 stars

It’s the house of their dreams. Former marine Harry and his wife, Sasha, have packed up their life and their golden retriever, Dash, and fled the corporate rat race to live off the land in rural Idaho. Their breathtaking new home sits on more than forty acres of meadow, aspen trees, and pine forest in the Teton Valley. Their nearest neighbors, Dan and Lucy Steiner, come bearing more than housewarming gifts. Dan and Lucy warn Harry and Sasha of a malevolent spirit that lives in the valley, one that with every season will haunt them in fresh, ever-more-diabolical ways. At first, it seems like an old wives’ tale. But when spring arrives, so does the first evil manifestation, challenging everything Harry and Sasha thought they knew about the world. As each season passes, the spirit grows stronger, the land more sinister, and each encounter more dangerous. Will Harry and Sasha learn the true meaning of a forever home before it’s too late? 

I love a good rural horror story. There is something about an isolated setting somewhere in the woods with little to no neighbors, that just instantly intrigues me. 

Harry and Sasha are interesting characters to follow as they start to experience the strange and supernatural events that call their Idaho property home. I enjoyed that these two are opposite personalities, so the reader was given differing viewpoints, as they each served as narrator. I thought that the setting and the different spirit haunting manifestations were the story’s strong points. The pace slowed down around the middle and the authors started to include details I thought were distracting, which caused me to lose a bit of interest in the story. While I enjoyed this one as a whole, I was pretty frustrated with the ending. I won’t give any spoilers, but it felt very rushed and implausible. 

🎧: I listened to this one on audio and highly recommend checking it out in this format! The narrator does a fantastic job building suspense and bringing the story to life.

A huge thank you to Grand Central Publishing for my gifted copy.