Horns - Joe Hill

Joe Hill is fast becoming my favourite author! After reading a couple of his books he just seems to be getting better and better at what he does!  I do honestly believe that anything he writes will be pretty awesome!! And it only made it even better when I found out that he is actually Stephen King's son. Which definitely explains where he gets his writing style and genre from! It must run in the family! Where I find King a little too scary for nighttime reading (yes I am 21 and scared to go to sleep after reading) I find that I can enjoy Hill anywhere and everywhere! Including at work, in the bath and in bed (even before I go to sleep!!) So here is the first of many.

Horns - Joe Hill

Horns is definitely not the book that I expected it to be!

Ig Perrish is a normal boy/man, depending on where you are in the book. He has a family, including a brother Terry Perrish, friends and eventually a girlfriend. Ig meets Merrin in church (of all places) when he is just 15 years old! Merrin flashes Ig (not like that, especially not in a church) with her gold cross! And from there on in they are inseparable! They are like loves young dream! However Ig and Merrin have a mutual friend Lee. Now Lee is a little strange! And he also has a thing for Merrin and was actually the first one to speak to her. Lee carries a torch for Merrin the whole way through the book! Lee is also a compulsive liar and a thief, he lies repeatedly about not being able to afford things, when he can. He also lies about his family life etc etc etc ... You get the point! He is not a nice character, but both Ig and Merrin seem to like Lee.

The book starts with Ig waking up after a very drunken night and finding that he has grown horns! By this time his girlfriend, Merrin, has been dead nearly a year. She was brutally raped and murdered at the same spot that Ig gets very drunk the night before he finds his horns. He soon realises that the horns have many uses and when people see them they feel the need to confess to everything that they have ever done, wanted to do or feel like doing! They tell Ig exactly what they think of him whether he wants to hear it or not. Many people truly believe that Ig killed Merrin, even his mother and his father. There is only his brother who does not believe he killed Merrin but he tells Ig who did kill her! I wont spoil it for you! Ig then finds out that if he touches a person he can see every sin that they have ever committed which will obviously make it so much easier for him to actually find out who killed Merrin.

Along the way he gets battered and bruised but he finally does find out what happened to his  girlfriend. And along the way we find out how they met, how they spent time together and how they split up the night before Merrin was murdered. It isn't so much a mystery like Hill's other novels but it is an amazing book nonetheless! He looks at life from different perspectives and shows how things can be misinterpreted by different people and how this can lead to the downfall of people and their morals. I love how Hill writes anyway but in this novel more than any other that I have read of his, he manages to weave the present and the past seamlessly. The couple of different stories do not jar and you're not left thinking why on Earth would he put that just in the middle there! He is an amazing writer and needs a lot more recognition than he actually gets!!

Ill leave the rest for you to find out by reading this!!!! You have to! Put it on you TBR list and move it close to the top!!

See you soon :)
Leanne