Halloween night sees the mysterious Caverna del Diablo play house to a group of teens looking to scare one of their classmates out of his mind. Who would’ve thought it would be those cruel pranksters who’d be the first to fall to pieces (literally) on the scariest night on the calendar?
A spooky Halloween themed romp this is not. There’s no costume dress up, no trick or treating, and no mass consumption of candy. The author simply uses the celebration of the ‘dead returned’ as a means to get a bunch of horny teens (three couples and two uncomfortable outcasts) into a dire situation deep inside a the caverns of a supposedly haunted cave.
The teens are pretty generic for these types of books but that doesn’t make them any less readable. I mean, they’re generally written as fodder for the proverbial meat grinder and that’s exactly the way their short spans play out with each couple slowly but steadily falling under the blood lust gaze of the cave dwellers, until meeting their gruesome demise. A sturdy stomach is required to get through some of the chapters…
There is, however, a shallow undercurrent of a backstory; class nerd Cory Fleming doesn’t know why he’s suddenly invited to hang with the cool group of kids on Halloween, but doesn’t give the invite much thought, after all, his long time crush is part of said group so maybe he stands chance at wooing her with his nerdiness so she leaves her jock boyfriend and swoons into his open arms? Not as unlikely as you’d think…
Turns out Cory is the pawn in a cruel game and finds himself stranded in the dark without a light source, left to wade his way through the darkness with little hope of reaching the surface. I found the bullying more hard to swallow than the other horror elements, so reader beware.
Hell-O-Ween is a lot of fun once you get passed the bullying elements. At it’s core it’s a survival horror with some nice tension and a heathy dose of sex thrown in to keep things firmly in the R-rated section of the horror aisle. The characters, as mentioned serve their purpose and make for decent reading despite not hanging around all that long.
This is the first horror novel of David Robbins’ I’ve read (first novel was Blood Cult) and I really liked it. I’ll certainly be on the look out for more!
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