Another Halloween horror read! This was a great genre book. Splatter horror with young protagonists and it hit all the right notes. Teenagers doing stupid things? Check. Nowhere to run but the neighborhood haunted house? Check. Cannibal Freaks that live in the basement? Check. Old guy who is a secret badass? Check. Young guy who just wants to do the right thing? Check. Buckets of body fluids? Check.

Contrary to other reviews, there is absolutely no rape of any living thing in this book. A corpse isn't a person. It's gross, incredibly repulsive, and a serious crime in most places, but it isn't rape. ( )

Good Book. Don't read if creatures with large mutant diseased phallus are not your thing. If you read Keene at all you already know that he usually has some type of monster lusting after human women and this book is no different, it just part of the fun of reading his books. ( )

Brian Keene is a sick fuck. And yet, I can't stop reading his books! ( )

This was a decent read if you are just looking for a kill em all splatterfest of a novel, don't expect any questions to be answers though, except for who will survive and what will be left of them. It was by far the goriest most depraved novel of Brian keene's that I have read and I have read most of them. It had some original and grewsum parts in it that made it stand out from similar novels. ( )

Rating: 2.5 of 5

Inner city cannibals + trapped teenagers = lots of carnage. That's about the gist of Urban Gothic, and why I won't read it again. With horror movies, I'm a gorehound. Probably why zombie flicks are my fave. But in its literary counterpart, there has to be more than just splatter in order to get under my skin, to terrify me. Keene's use of smell was brilliant, though. It made the story way more shocking (and sickening) than if he'd relied solely on visuals. I gagged a couple times and flinched more times than I can count.

Fast-paced, rampant graphic violence, and human deformities galore.

Note to self: This was my first Keene novel. Even though this one didn't blow me away, I still plan to read The Rising. ( )