Little Star by John Ajvide Lindqvist and Marlaine Delargy

John Ajvide Lindqvist has been crowned the heir apparent to Stephen King by numerous sources, and he is heralded around the globe as one of the most spectacularly talented horror writers working today. His first novel, Let the Right One In, is a cult classic that has been made into iconic films in both Sweden and in the United States. His second novel, Handling the Undead, is beloved by horror fans everywhere. His third novel, Harbor, is a masterpiece that draws countless comparisons to Stephen King. Now, with Little Star, his most profoundly unsettling book yet, Lindqvist treads previously unmarked territory.

A man finds a baby in the woods, left for dead. He brings the baby home, and he and his wife raise the girl in their basement. When a shocking and catastrophic incident occurs, the couple’s son Jerry whisks the girl away to Stockholm to start a new life. There, he enters her in a nationwide singing competition. Another young girl who’s never fit in sees the performance on TV, and a spark is struck that will ignite the most terrifying duo in modern fiction.

Little Star is an unforgettable portrait of adolescence, a modern-day Carrie for the age of internet bullies, offensive reality television, and overnight You Tube sensations. Chilling, unnerving, and petrifying, Little Star is Lindqvist’s most disturbing book to date.

One book critic said that Lindqvist is “Scandanavia's answer to Stephen King.” I'd say that's true. His writing is a lot like King's, for better or worse.

The bad: The book is overly long and poorly paced. It takes way too long for any major plot progression and way too long for the two protagonists/villains to meet each other. The prose is also a bit sloppy, with plenty of cliches and lazy descriptions (though maybe that's the fault of the translation).

The good: The characters of Theres and Theresa are horrifying. While the book isn't scary per se, their characters are frightening, in part because they're so evil and in part because Lindqvist did a great job of making you believe how they could become that way.

The book is shocking in many ways, not just in the scenes of brutal violence but also in scenes of bullying, online interactions, the way Theresa pulls away from her friends and family as she slowly becomes more sociopathic.

The book is told from many points of view, but the scenes of violence are normally told from the POV of the perpetrator of the violence. That means we're deprived of one kind of suspense and tension (fearing for the victim and hoping they can escape) and instead are given a different kind (horrified by how depraved and evil the children are).

That's why I say it's not a “scary” book. But it is an interesting one. And in the creepy-children subgenre of horror, children don't get much creepier than this.

Started out great but soon spiralled down. Really bad second half.

Well, that was weird.....compelling for the most part.....but weird. Murder and violence aside, Lindqvist paints a vivid portrait of the adolescent outsider.