Quality Rating: Two Stars
Enjoyment Rating: One Star

I stopped reading The Sacrifice Box at about 11% for three reasons:
1. small island, estranged teens, tight-community bullying - I've heard it all a million times before. And from people that actually talk and engage with each other like real people.
2. John Green levels of pretentious names and backstory. If you're using it as a metaphor or subtext, fine. This was not.
3. Nothing. Is. Happening. It doesn't matter how many little eerie mysterious paragraphs you shove in between the school narrative, I have to care about what's currently happening before I can care about what's coming.

Life's too short to read books you aren't enjoying. I encourage those who start this and aren't immediately infuriated to continue on with the story - there may be something there once things actually start happening. But for me, I have enough books to dive into to let the ones I'm not engaged with go.

Scary and memorable once it gets going. The perfect mix of Stranger Things meets Stephen King meets The Goonies .... some of my most favourite things. It's gory and gutty in parts but, if like me, you don't mind that then this book is for you. It was tense and twisty and endearing towards characters you really care about throughout. I really enjoyed it.

Takes a little while to get going but once you are hooked it is utterly gripping & genuinely scary with some memorable characters & a convincing, heartfelt depiction of teenage friendships.

I don't think I'd compare this book to Stranger Things - which is what got me wanting to read it - the only similarities are the edge of horror, 5 friends and the 80's. Still, I guess it got me to read the book which was the point!
I've said it about this books before but the 'something in the woods' feel of this made me think of the Sign of Seven trilogy by Nora Roberts. In those some children find something in the woods...but again, that's where the similarities end.

I received a copy of this book in the September Book Box Club box as a bonus item as well as from Netgalley. The copy from Netgalley got me reading it before the publish date, but mostly I read the paper copy.
I didn't really think about it then, but this would have been a great October read! It wasn't terribly scary and the most tense parts I actually sped through because I was actually meant to be doing something else, but I definitely spent some time on edge! I think it would have been terribly satisfying to read it in the spirit of Halloween.
Just, please don't read this book while camping in the woods...

For me this book had a slow start and some of it was something of a confusion. I quickly learnt to read the chapter headings, because sometimes they weren't just headings but times and places or people or something and that really kinda helped you know what was going on...
I was left with a few questions but I think that perhaps I was meant to. I also think that had I not been rushing to the end before I had to go to work the end might not have felt quite so frantic. Having said that, I like that it felt frantic to me, it added to the anticipation and I do like anticipation.
The ending was good, but there could have done with more around it. I mean, didn't he technically break a rule again?!
More to the point, I'd have liked to have seen some of the aftermath. There were some conversations I really wanted to see him have with his mother! They would have been so awkward and confusing. "Yes, I know the thing because of reason." "Wait, what?"

This was written in the UK!
I'd say 'set in the UK', but I haven't worked out where exactly yet. I'm not the best at paying attention to locations - I assumed it was set in America until mention of a Blue Peter badge popped up.
It's also set on an island and Sep keeps looking to the mainland. If we have any more clues, I don't remember them...

This has also been compared to Stephen King apparently. That makes more sense to me than Stranger Things - but then that was written in the style of Stephen King, so yes?
I find Stephen King quite heavy on the description which is not my favourite Maybe I need to audio book him too?!
This was a lot lighter (and possibly a tad less dark). A good book to ease you into Stephen King, or to try if you find King just that little bit too hard.

I think that I would read this book again sometime. Hopefully slower, so that I can glory in the terror I'm sure I was meant to pick up on!

3.5 stars
The blurb of this book caught my eye and reeled me in. It sounded utterly compelling, and with promises of it being for fans of Stranger Things and the like, I was pretty excited heading into this book.

There was definitely a sinister feeling throughout this book, that sense of being constantly stalked by something and making you scared of the dark corners, as well as that ‘80s vibe that is making a resurgence. Of course there’s a slight Stephen King-esque feel to this book. It’s a creepy horror with children/teens, and their friendship being a pivotal plot point. That seems to be a standard winning formula for Stephen King that Martin Stewart has borrowed here. However, unlike with King, I am a little unsure of the audience for this book? Initially I assumed young adults, but there’s a lot of quite graphic and disturbing scenes, so this is probably very borderline YA - if you’re not comfortable with graphic scenes and animals dying then I suggest you approach this with caution.

The scene setting and world building was great, very creepy and vivid, creating a very immersive story that set my heart racing on more than one occasion. Some of the minor characters were great, Mario for one, whom I loved. I do wish there was a little more character development with the main characters though. Aside from Sep, there’s not really chance to get to know any of them and learn any of their backstories. The story is largely told from Sep’s perspective, but it would flit between other characters every now and then, but unfortunately the opportunity to develop the other characters wasn’t taken advantage of.

If you’ve enjoyed the recent surge of ‘80s, retro shows and movies and a distinct horror vibe, then this is a book for you!

The Sacrifice Box lures us onto seemingly familiar ground; an 80s-set high school story soundtracked by The Smiths, The Cure and Wham! complete with awkward teenage crushes, a perfect, golden-hued summer, even a vicious school bully with a mohawk and a pellet gun. Comparisons to classics like Stand By Me, IT and The Goonies, as well as nostalgia-fest Stranger Things, are spot-on.

But familiar ground soon leads to much darker territory; the looming forest where something malevolent has been festering, waiting to be let out. Four years earlier September Hope and his friends made a pact without understanding the consequences... and will be forced to confront not only the horrors the sacrifice box holds but the equally frightening things hidden inside their own hearts. 

Sep is a complex, otherworldly kid; set apart and made lonely by his intelligence and his own blinkered focus on escaping the island community where he's never quite fit in. (He also has a hearing impairment which is almost incidental to the plot – full Disability Done Right marks to Martin Stewart here..) 

Of Sep's not-quite-friends, it's endearing smartarse Arkle who gets the lion's share of character development, as well as all the best lines. Hadley, Mack and Lamb don't leap off the page with quite as much force, but it's easy to feel for and care about them; each is hiding something, each is unsure and afraid, each needs the others more than they can stand to admit. The novel hangs on the dynamic between these five, and their messed-up, hormonal tangle of fierce love and simmering resentment feels honest and real. 

The writing throughout is GOOD, in that particular and rare way that makes me lift my head from the pages every so often, grin widely and announce to the dog or a nearby pot plant, 'I'M REALLY ENJOYING THIS BOOK'. There is real vigour and life in the prose; a mix of brutally poetic descriptions pungent with autumnal decay – waves withdraw 'like the shrinking of a dead man's gums'; a subway carriage '(tastes) rat-fur sweet'; limbs hang out of car windows 'like wilted leaves' – and naturalistic dialogue that rattles along brilliantly and crackles with wit.

There's always an extra layer of goodness to a book when you can sense the author's enjoyment alongside your own and for all its darkness, The Sacrifice Box is properly, laugh-out-loud funny. Even in its most upsetting moments, Stewart will throw in a dash of irreverence that somehow manages to heighten both the humour and the horror. 

Mixing gags and gore is always a balancing act but this book pulls it off, the way Shaun of the Dead manages to pull off being both hilarious and genuinely scary. I went into it expecting unrelenting bleakness but the opening chapters feel more like a surreal character-based comedy. Mario, the island's bluntly pragmatic vet/chip-shop proprietor ('I am vet – this mean I kill all the animals') reads like Pop from The League of Gentlemen's more benevolent cousin. There's even a minor character named 'Manbat' – I'll leave you to deduce his real name...

As far as shocks and scares go, there's a lot happening at once; two generations' worth of returning sacrifices, horrific nightmares, dead animals coming back to gruesome half-life and the menacing crows that haunt Sep and his friends' footsteps as though they've been studying up on Hitchcock (as the old gamekeeper points out so ominously it's almost parodic, 'they's not usual crows'.) Sometimes it feels as though The Sacrifice Box is trying to be too many things at once – folk horror, psychological horror, zombie thriller, nightmarish fairy tale – but the sheer variety of threats keeps you on your toes and never allows the tension to drop. 

But scares can feel gratuitous and hollow if there's nothing worth surviving them for; the best kind of horror story is the kind with the biggest heart. The Sacrifice Box isn't only terrifying and darkly hilarious – it's a little bit devastating too. It's a book about childhood's bittersweet end, about how we grow and change and forget what we should hold dear, about how much we give up without realising what we've lost. It tells us – just as Stranger Things and even Shaun of the Dead tell us – that the way to survive and be happy is to remember what truly matters; to love each other more. It sounds like a trite and oddly fluffy sentiment for a book featuring the image of an undead crow burrowing inside an empty human skin, but The Sacrifice Box more than earns the right to go there. It's not often a horror novel will make me shed tears but this one managed it – not because of the deep sadness within its pages, but because of the even deeper love beneath.

The sacrifice box feels familiar, reminiscent of incredible films from the 80’s - ‘Stand by me’ ‘The goonies’. However that safety in familiarity soon disappears, as five friends make sacrifices to a mysterious box which they find in the forest of their small town. They agree to always stay friends and not to break the rules of the sacrifice box. Someone does break the rules and the five must face the consequences. There are moments of pure comedy which cut through the fear and mystery, which make this a throughly good read.

The Sacrifice Box.

I have been looking forward to reading this story for a while.  I was not disappointed. Fabulous stuff and almost perfectly formed for me as the reader.

This is really a book for my generation. Finally British children of the eighties like me, get an anglicised version of a rip roaring story  similar to IT and Dreamcatcher by Stephen King. I immediately recognised myself and my own motley crew in this story of  a group of  very disparate children bonding over a shared summer holiday.

Parallels with the works of SK were inevitable as thematically and structurally there are similarities. A group of youngsters experience a trauma that arises from a supernatural evil taking advantage of the innocence of youth. The loneliest and most isolated have gravitated towards each other one fateful summer and in a bid to cement that the most tenuous of bonds, they commit their most personal items to a musty box that appears in the woods. These totems are planned to act as unbreakable links when the summer is done.

There were rules of course and someone has broken them all, disturbed the sanctity of this rather macabre time capsule.

It seems History starts to repeat itself, a theme of cyclical horrors repeated seemingly in perpetuity features. Perhaps because teens are renowned for balking against rules , even those set by peers, this callow bid for independence by someone from the group in both instances invariably leads to fear, violence and really weird goings on!

The 80s  kids are well drawn each with their own personality, voices and look that immediately creates memorable characters. September is a worthy central hero, and I found myself seriously rooting for Arkle the joker in the pack.

The fates of the previous group drawn to that same spot decades before, provides a ominous foretelling that ratchets up the tension, so even as our heroes start experiencing terrifying encounters linked to the very particular gifts given to the gaping maw of that titular Box. 

The personal traumas of the kids inform their choices and the punishment meted out by the entity that is contained in the box.

Nature is used by great effect by the smells , sights and sounds of the woods themselves, the very foliage holds an ominous threat. Crows are slick, beady eyed ides Of Terror and the most innocuous of creature becomes terrifying.

Balanced against the more mundane but equally damaging  fear felt by every non-conformist child of being made an example of and humiliated is just as frightening tool to isolate the kids within their own fear bubbles.

I was drawn in by this macabre tale that does not pull the punches, but deep at it’s Heart is a  simple premise that is so effectively presented, that Friendship and love might just be their most effective weapon in anyone’s arsenal. King has sprawling epics to accomplish this, Martin Stewart has managed to distil it down into a much more manageable piece

The best horror novels are those which make you feel deeply connected to the characters.Stewart has crafted a marvellous tale and the insertion of some rather lovely elements that truly bed the plot  in the 80s of my childhood lifts the story head and shoulders above other YA fantasy horrors. my favourite; the wanton destruction of the packaged Chewbacca action figure must have had Star Wars fans groaning.

Five Stars.

I dedicate this review to Sarah,James,Joanne, Kelly, Michelle and Natasha, my little gang whose wood was the Banks  Of Hen Brook, under the bridge and the tree houses on the periphery of “The Green”. I miss those days of bike rides with James with Kermit strapped to the front of his Gold Chopper with me following behind on my blue one

The Sacrifice Box begins in the Summer of 82 and tells the story of five friends who come across an unusual box hidden in the woods. To show their commitment to their friendship the friends each decide to sacrifice something special to them into the box.
Each child agrees to certain rules: Never visit the box alone. Never visit at night and never take back your sacrifice.
Four years later and the friends have grown apart and no longer speak to each until terrifying events lead them to believe that one of them has broken the rules and they all must pay the consequences.
The Sacrifice Box is a cross between The Breakfast Club and a Stephen King novel. Originally it was a slow starter, but it quickly picked up pace and ended up being quite a good read.
Some elements of the book were scary, and some were less so, for example Barnaby was more reminiscent of Goosebumps for me than anything else. However, there were times when it was genuinely creepy.
When the book begins in 1982 Sep has enjoyed spending the summer with a group of friends he happened upon. He knows it will soon be over though and they will go back to their normal friends and he will go back to be a loner. In desperation Sep seizes on the idea of the sacrifice box to try and bond the group of friends to each other. Sep likes being friends with Mack, Arkle, Lamb and Hadley and doesn’t want them to leave him.
“Sep knelt beside the box. The Forest was tight with heat, and sweat prickled on his skin.
The clearing around him was a blanket of root and stone, caged by silent trees and speckled dark, leaf spinning pools that hid the wriggling things of the soil. And at its heart, as though dropped by an ebbing tide, was the sacrifice box.”
Sep’s friends each have their own sacrifice for the box, something of meaning to them. For Sep his chosen sacrifice is Barnaby his childhood teddy bear. The teddy bear used to be a source of comfort for him but when his mother was ill with cancer he loaned him to her whilst she was in hospital. Afterward, Barnaby was a reminded for them both of them of his mother’s illness. He is pleased to be rid of it.
“We’re doing this for each other whatever you sacrifice has to mean something.”
The rules of the box originally came to Sep in a waking dream and he passed them on to the others.
“They spoke the words – the rules of the sacrifice. ‘Never come to the box alone,’ they said, hands unmoving. ‘Never open it after dark’, they said, fingers joined together. ‘Never take back your sacrifice,’ they finished.”
Four years later Sep is excitedly filling out his application form to go to college on the mainland and escape the small town where he grew up. The adults in Sep’s life are all concerned about his lack of friends since that long -forgotten summer.
At school Sep is frequently bulled and called ‘septic’ by his schoolmates. On this particular day though Arkle stands up to the school bully for him and tells him that he and the others want to talk to him later.
Sep works in a chip shop after school for a man named Mario who is also the local vet. Mario is a source of comfort for Sep and clearly thinks highly of him.
Arkle and the others come to visit him in the chip shop and say they really need to talk to him. Strange things have been happening and they all suspect that someone has been breaking the rules of the sacrifice box.
Sep is sceptical until later that night when realises that his former friends are right and someone has broken the rules.
Little do they realise they are not the first ones to have encountered the box nor the first ones to have broken the rules.

Fans of Stephen King's novella THE BODY and novel IT, as well as TV's STRANGER THINGS, will adore this YA horror by Martin Stewart. Set on the fictional island of Hill Ford, it follows five friends who, during summer 1982 found the Sacrifice Box, and made sacrifices to it, promising to be friends forever. But four years later, everything has changed, they don't speak at all, in fact Sep is trying to leave the island, and his old life behind him. If the Sacrifice Box will let him... 

I really enjoyed this nostalgic look at small town life through the eyes of September Hope, Stewart does a marvellous job of creating a tense and claustrophobic world, where the stakes become increasingly darker and gorier. The book doesn't flinch from creating vividly nightmarish scenes, and creating a sense that everything is fair game, and there's a real sense of danger for all of the characters.

EEK!! Definitely not a read for the faint hearted.

This book is a horror story about a group of children, Sep, Mack, Arkle, Lamb and Hadley who find a box in the woods and decide to bury it with a sacrifice that means something to them. A set of rules is chanted: never come to the box alone, never open the box after dark, never take back your sacrifice’. 
Needless to say- these rules are broken and the items placed in the box come back to haunt them- literally.
What happens next is a scene straight from Stephen King. Attacking teddy bears, scary killer dolls and a lot of gore.
If you like horror and the unbelievable- this is the story for you. Well written, scary and deep with a good ending!

I first heard of this book when watching YALC vlogs last year and was immediately excited for it- anything reminiscent of Stranger Things has me immediately interested! 

For about the first 25% I didn't understand the Stranger Things link at all but it becomes clear the further into the book you get. The intense friendship that is formed between the main characters both in the summer they make their sacrifices and trying to deal with the box's consequences was fairly well explored although there was no real explanation of why their initial friendship broke down so quickly. Mario is an angel and his relationship with Sep was so pure and gorgeous it hurt my little heart (in a good way of course).

The writing was spooky and atmospheric and freaked me out more than once! I think it's really well done for a YA thriller/horror and I definitely felt like I was a part of the story. I also really liked the inclusion of the original users of the box- this was a really interesting subplot and again done very well by the author. 

Although a lot happens in this book and it's pretty fast paced, the most important aspect for me was the relationships. Parent/child, teacher/student, employer/employee, budding romantic relationships and friendships were all beautifully handled. The ending also offered closure for every character and felt totally natural. 

I'll definitely be looking out for more from this author and recommending this book to people all the time.

The plot centres on a group of friends living on an island where they find a strange box in the woods as children. They decide to place objects in the box which have a personal connection to themselves in some way and make a pact. The box is never to be opened by one of them alone.. little do they know they may not be the first to do so.
So far so good, until one of them appears to break the pact after the friends drift apart. Everything deteriorates from that point. I found the storyline a little fragmented and unfortunately the direction in which the book travelled was not to my taste .

Fantastic book! A wonderful and original combination of thrills and strangeness..

My thanks to Penguin Random House UK - Children's Penguin, and Netgalley for the opportunity of receiving an advance copy for review. All my reviews are based on my experience whilst reading the books and are as unbiased as I can make them. 
Let me start by saying that the depth of thrill in this book is deep. It is as many others have said a return to a familiar genre which initially developed in the 80s but it is a very clever plotted book with twists and turns, shocks and unease galore.
Personally I wouldn't take this to the beach I found it too chilling for that location. I did however, settle back in my armchair, mince pie, a glass of tipple and a snug fire and read. Oh - I also locked the doors after a few chapters. A good read and hopefully more will come from the author.

Sep, Arkle, Mack, Lamb and Hadley are five friends who are thrown together one hot, sultry summer. They discover a stone box hidden in the forest and they decide to make a sacrifice: something special to them. They make a pact, they will never return to the box at night, they will never visit alone and they will never take back their offerings. Four years later the gang has drifted apart. Then strange events take place. One of them has broken the pact.

I did not like that lots of animals die in this book (some readers will find this quite upsetting). This is quite a scary read considering it is written for teens and young adult readers. Some of the descriptions are quite gory and there is quite explicit descriptions of death. It is well written with a decent pace.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Penguin Random House UK, Children's and the author Martin Stewart for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Dark, disturbing and very dramatic. Teen angst was hard enough before a broken promise wants you and everything you hold dear dead..... ARC from Netgalley

This book is hard work and I'm not sure what it is trying to be. Is it a horror story? Or a creepy one, a tale of lasting friendship or hopes and fears?

I get the premise of the school friends finding this secret box and then having to revisit these relationships a few years later, but i personally found it too much horror and not enough warm padding around it too make it feel complete. I was ultimately disappointed and felt let down that it could have been much more polished.

Superbly spooky and atmospheric read. I'm glad I wasn't reading it alone, late at night.  The story of 5 friends and the consequences of a pact made one summer in 1982.  Like other reviewers, I did struggle to place the action at first, but soon realized that it really didn't matter as the story gripped me.  As well as the horror element, I also enjoyed watching the characters re-connect with each other.

If you like good old fashioned horror like that of Stephen King, if you loved Stand By Me, If you religiously watched Stranger Things, then The Sacrifice Box is your next must read.

During one idyllic summer a group of kids share an intense friendship and when one of them finds an old stone box in the forest and suggests that they each sacrifice something to the box, something that marks how special their friendship is, it seems like the perfect end to the school holidays.

Four years later, the group has drifted apart, gone back to their usual friend groups or cliques. A comet is due to fly over the island where they live and things start to go very, very wrong for the kids, and for everyone connected to them.

The Sacrifice Box is not a psychological horror. The visceral evil starts early and builds swiftly to a high level of terror which never diminishes. The final few chapters are as horrific as any you’ll read this year. Don’t let the fact that these are children put you off. There are few adults who would not be disturbed by the events in this book.

I read this book over a couple of days. Believe me, you won’t want to put it down.

I received a copy of the book from the publisher via Netgalley in return for an honest review.