Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and Martin Stewart for my ARC of The Sacrifice Box.
First off let me give a trigger warning to potential readers that lots of animals die in this book which was quite upsetting (for me) and might be for you.
It’s the late 70s and a group of friends on an island near New York City, are spending the summer together. Thrown together by chance, a broken arm, friends at camp etc. Sep, Arkle, Lamb, Hadley and Mack uncover a mysterious box in the woods. Driven by a waking dream experienced by Sep, they decide to make sacrifices to the box to seal their friendship.

Fast forward to 1982 and the five friends are no longer friends. When school started again, Sep earned himself the nickname ‘septic’ getting bullied by those he once made a pact of friendship with. He’s also thinking of going to boarding school on the mainland. The others have their own lives and own worries. That is until the box is disturbed and terrible things begin to happen and the friends are thrown back together again.

This book was first and foremost very weird. It jumped around quite a lot and I can’t say I’ve come away from it knowing what happened or making any sense of it. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I just didn’t get it. There seemed to be good storylines that pinged along and never came to anything and to be honest most of it was just really, really sad. I may have felt this way because I really don’t like reading about animals dying, especially if said animals, die because they’re trying to protect humans. So maybe that ruined it for me. But I don’t know, maybe I don’t get horror either as I’m not really a horror fan!
This book also smacked of Stephen King’s Stand By Me a bit too much for my liking which made it feel a bit replicated.
However, despite all that, I did read until the end so there must have been something keeping me going with it!