Clown in a Cornfield
Ratings66
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings66
Average rating3.8
Bram Stoker Award Winner for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel In Adam Cesare’s terrifying young adult debut, Quinn Maybrook finds herself caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress—that just may cost her life. Quinn Maybrook and her father have moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs, to find a fresh start. But what they don’t know is that ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half. On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can. Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now. YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults Nominee
Featured Series
2 primary booksClown in a Cornfield is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 2020 with contributions by Adam Cesare.
Reviews with the most likes.
A gripping, scary, and surprisingly timely read. Adam Cesare killed it.
So good!! Quinn and her father leave Philadelphia to start over in a small town.
They get more than they bargained for not all small towns are sleepy some of them are filled with killer clowns.
This book is an absolute blast. I'm not sure I want to get much more in depth than that. I was looking for some fun, punchy horror and I got it.
The set-up is a simple one, and fairly recognizable to anyone who has watched a horror movie, or really any movie centered around teens. Quinn Maybrook and her widowed father move from Philadelphia to a small town in the Midwest called Kettle Springs. They're looking for a fresh start, and the town needed a new doctor. Despite wanting to keep her head down, she finds herself falling in with an unusual band of rebels - as though the popular kids had gone a little rotten. When she's invited to a party out in the cornfield, Kettle Springs starts to feel pretty cool. And then a clown with a cross bow shows up.
Clown in a Cornfield is not remotely subtle. It takes a look at our country and the current zeitgeist, and puts it in microcosm. With lots of blood, whirring chainsaws, wayward teens and angry Boomers. This book is about how much we hate young people, and why we keep killing them in the kinds of movies this book was inspired by. And despite taking on all this so unapologetically, it is still so much fun. It does take its time to set up the character dynamics, and honestly I didn't mind that much, because once it gets going, it does not stop.
For horror, it's not that scary. It has gore and it has violence, but not really the kind of suspense that gets you spooked, though there is plenty of tension and some great classic horror beats. I actually found the unraveling and the revealing of the villains a bit more interesting than the perseverance of the central characters, but that's a subtle distinction. I kept turning the page, and I had a damn good time doing it.
