| Title | : | Touch the Night |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 158767758X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781587677588 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 400 |
| Publication | : | First published June 16, 2020 |
Stranger Things and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre unite to form a blood-soaked matrimony of violence and corruption.
Something sinister’s hiding in the small town of Percy, Indiana, and twelve-year-old Joshua Washington and Alonzo Jones are about to find themselves up close and personal with it. After a harmless night of petty property damage leads to the unthinkable, the red and blue lights of a cop car are the last things these boys want to see. Especially a cop car driven by something not quite human.
Enter Mary Washington and Ottessa Jones. Their sons have been best friends for years, and now Josh and Alonzo have been abducted in the dead of night. Worst of all, the local sheriff refuses to believe they’re missing, leaving it up to Mary and Ottessa to take the law into their own hands before a family of ungodly lunatics can complete a ritual decades in the making.
Together they will embark on a surreal and violent journey into a land of corrupt law enforcement, small-town secrets, gravitational oddities, and ancient black magic.
Touch the Night Reviews
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There are some huge booby traps when it comes to coming-of-age-horror stories. How easy is it to make your characters do something beyond their age, or show some kind of wisdom or mental maturity which takes away the childhood ínnocence they are supposed to have? Personally, my biggest pet peeve of this genre is when the author plays it safe: How can anything truly bad happens to the innocent kids? We need a happy ending or it simply won’t sell, all the good guys need to survive – people can’t handle anything else!
Well, Max Booth III, take a bow, because you gave this mentality a huge, fat middle finger and told those people to suck it! This is a horror book, not some fucking YA, piddle around the point and let’s not offend anyone, good golly gosh, no!
The kids in this story, Alonzo and Joshua, are twelve years old. They are not perfect little angels, nor are they truly bad seeds, but they are flawed children living in tough circumstances, doing the stupid shit most kids will do during their youth. Until things get out of hand one night and they cross a line which will have severe consequences.
The last thing they wanted to see was the flashing lights of a cop car. Well, that or a Celine Dion concert, really. And while they will be spared the latter – this author is not a sadist, you know – they will have to face the police...but are they really cops, or just some sicko’s pretending to be the law?
With both boys gone and the police unwilling to help them, their mothers has no choice but to take the law into their own hands and go about things vigilante style.
STOP! You are thinking Thelma and Louise, right? You’re wrong, just put it out of your head and move on.
You are about to walk into the small town of Percy, Indiana, and look into the deep, dark abyss of corruption, secrets and black magic...not to mention Vodka, hangovers and a smiley face penis – and nobody wants to look the one-eyed-monster right in the eye when there might be hints of eunuchs... Okay, I’ll admit it, that is a sentence I never thought I’d write...
Let me tell you a little story about myself. In my adult life, there has not been many occasions where a movie, tv show or book scared me. I don’t mean startle, I mean deeply psychological fear. Many years ago, it was about one o’clock in the morning and I was watching a music video show on television, when I first saw COME TO DADDY by Aphex Twin. That video freaked me the fuck out, for some psychological reason I still don’t understand today. While I’d been living alone for years, I had to get up and make sure all the doors were locked because I was feeling paranoid. It is not my proudest moment, I have to admit. Why bring it up? Well, when the twins appeared in this book, I flashed back to that memory. I was not scared, but I had this cold, heavy, uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. I’m not sure if it was the gallon of ice cream I ate or not, but I dare you to watch that music video and then read this book...
While I can see how some people might be offended by this book, I think Max handled it really, really well. And while some might actually hate that ending – sir, I LOVED it – I was more than 90% into the story and I still didn’t know how it was going to end.
Thanks for this story, Max, I think it was the best possible way to leave the horrible 2020 behind... -
Max Booth’s TOUCH THE NIGHT is everything one could hope for in horror fiction. It checks all the horror boxes for me. Which boxes are those, Mother Horror? I’m glad you asked.
The first and most important box for me is emotional investment. This can come in a variety of ways but the strongest vehicle for me is character development. If I can fall in love with the characters in a horror story, all the safe, warm and fuzzy feelings are off the table. That’s how I like my horror: Dangerous. Risky.
Immediately, I knew Max Booth III was gunning for emotional wreckage. He took his time developing the two, young protagonists straight away through authentic dialog and that sweet, sweet coming-of-age vibe we find in classic, Robert McCammon or Stephen King novels.
I felt my reader’s heart falling desperately in love with 12 year olds, Alonzo Jones and Joshua Washington even though they’re both up to no good. As a mother, I was worried about them from the get-go.
I marvelled at how Booth effortlessly slides into the skins of these youthful, African American boys as they speculate on everything from senseless police brutality to puberty issues. As a brief side note here: I think it’s brave for authors to step outside their comfort zone and write characters not of their gender, race or sexual orientation. Max gives the boys distinct personalities and voices that are probably not so different from his own childhood experience. He is able to infuse that context with the social injustices we all feel and blend this together to pen two very relatable characters. It felt scary to me, how much I was responding to them emotionally in so little time.
Obviously something bad happens to them. I’m not spoiling anything for you, right? This is horror. Horror is not kind to young people.
Alonzo and Joshua are not the only two characters here, given almost equal if not more page time, are the mothers of the two boys, Mary and Ottessa. These two are my new favorite women protagonists in a horror novel. Ottessa is just a natural born, loud-mouth, take-no-shit, badass. After certain events transpire, she teams up with Joshua’s mother, Mary who is the perfect counter weight to Ottessa’s unhinged persona.
The chapters with these two are laugh out loud funny. I read a few parts out loud to my husband because the dialog was just that colorful and memorable.
That was a long explanation of the first horror box. Well, the second one won’t take long because it’s TEETH. Does this book BITE??
Well, this book terrified me. There were scenes I had to stop reading in bed because I didn’t like the way it was making me feel moments away from having to feel all vulnerable in the darkness. The “bad guys”, the villains, are BAD. Ugly. Disturbing. Unpredictable.
Booth did not shy away from darkness. Let’s just put it that way and then leave it there. I feel like above all else in reviews, protecting the reader’s discovery of unique details is priority number one. I feel like I’ve described for you how I engaged with this one:
It was full blown emotional wreckage. It was dark and brutal. Unflinchingly scary. When I closed my Kindle on the ending, I immediately went to Max Booth III and told him I hated him. So I hope this expresses my true and honest feelings about TOUCH THE NIGHT. Basically, it will be a contender for best novel in 2020. It’s that damn good.
Mother Horror Blurb: Holy, dark pits of hell. Max Booth is so slick. Man! This book grabs ahold of you—forces that lump of flesh in your chest into a vice grip of emotional torture and you just plead for mercy. This book takes me back to some old school Stephen King days- those stories with flesh and blood characters you hopelessly fall in love with?? They have to fight the darkest evil and you pray for light. How will it end?
You MUST BUY THIS BOOK!!! Full review 2/19/2020
https://gingernutsofhorror.com/fictio... -
Two mischievous pre-teen boys sneak out in the middle of the night to go “shopping” at a gas station convenience store. When the clerk rejects their proffered form of payment (a pornographic photo), things rapidly spiral out of control, resulting in the clerk’s vicious assault. A short while later when a police car pulls up to them, they don’t question why they’re being accosted. Little do they know that the two men who step out from the car are not seeking justice. When the car drives off, it doesn’t take them to the police station. How they’d wish it did....
This was such an amazingly immersive story—one that I thoroughly enjoyed until the final five to ten percent, when things quickly went downhill. The ending felt rushed and honestly, I felt cheated—to come so far and expect so much just to be let down. This book had so much potential and up until that point, I truly thought I’d be giving it a full five-star rating. Sadly, the author neglected to tie up some important loose ends (in my opinion) which completely deprived me of a satisfying ending after such a monumental build-up.
I must add that the two boys are African-American so the story presents issues of racial injustice which I found thought-provoking. I started out despising the mother of one of the boys (Alonzo’s mother, Otessa) but grew fond of her by the end of the story. Now that’s real talent on the author’s part. Booth is truly a wonderful storyteller, no doubt. Be warned—that dreaded “N” word is used a few times within the book. I know there are some readers who are very sensitive when it comes to that.
Overall, this was a good, entertaining story. I just wish that it had a much stronger, less disappointing ending. -
Max Booth III is a sick son of a gun. I say that as a high compliment. His new work attracted my attention when it was described to me as being a cross between “Stranger Things” and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. That isn’t entirely accurate; it is more than that, notwithstanding that its title is more reminiscent of an F. Scott Fitzgerald tome than a Robert McCammon novel. Gentle title or not, TOUCH THE NIGHT will give you waking nightmares.
The book is set in the year 2005 in the small town of Percy, Indiana. It centers on two fledgling 12-year-old juvenile delinquents, Joshua Washington and Alonzo Jones. It’s one of those somewhat mismatched friendships that, at the cusp of adolescence, works after a fashion. Alonzo thinks up the bad stuff to do, and Joshua goes along with it. Joshua’s parents aren’t wild about the friendship; they don’t care much for either Alonzo or his mother.
Things get rolling right away when the boys sneak out of Alonzo’s house during a sleepover. They break some windows and rob a convenience store before they are apprehended. Joshua and Alonzo think that they have been caught by the police, but as much as they dislike law enforcement, they get a sinking feeling in the pits of their stomachs when the old-style police cruiser passes right by the station and takes them out into the country to an extremely strange, dangerous and horrific place.
Meanwhile, Alonzo’s mom and Joshua’s parents are wondering where their sons are. The narrative switches back and forth between the two mothers, who gradually develop a camaraderie born of necessity, and Joshua and Alonzo, who realize that they are in major danger beyond anything that they --- or anyone else, really --- can comprehend. The moms are getting stonewalled by the local sheriff and come to realize that possibly there is more to his inaction than simple heard-it-all-before indifference.
Slowly but surely, it dawns on them that something is happening in Percy that is making it even stranger than it normally is. It appears that their chances of finding their sons are somewhere between slim and none, and slim just left Percy. Both narratives have their characters hopping and skipping across flaming lily pads with rabid alligators in hot pursuit. Actually, the book isn’t exactly that tame. We assume that the people who survive to the end will never be quite right again. If what we are told here is correct, neither will anything else.
TOUCH THE NIGHT is quite graphic in detail --- I mean, it is a horror novel --- but Booth can seriously write. The narratives, which eventually join up, move very quickly, so much so that it is difficult to tap the reading brakes because you’ll want to find out what happens next, even though you probably don’t want to know. I’ll predict right now that this book will be shortlisted for all of the Best Horror Novel lists. Thanks to Booth’s cinematic style, it also should be adapted for video, one of those series that premieres on Netflix on Friday and everyone watches all weekend.
Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub -
Max Booth III must be the busiest man in horror. Publisher, podcaster, screenwriter, editor and prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, with his time seemingly so in demand, it is all the more impressive that he is able to produce a novel so assured and accomplished as ‘Touch the Night’.
When twelve-year-olds Joshua and Alonzo decide to ditch a planned sleepover and instead spend the night walking the streets of Percy, Indiana, looking for something to pass the time, a seemingly innocuous trip to the local gas station takes an unexpected turn and the boys soon find themselves in trouble with the Law. At least, that’s how it seemed to them at first…
When the boys mothers notice them missing the next day, and the local police force seems either unwilling or unable to help, they begin to fear the worst. What follows is a descent into a surreal small-town nightmare of ancient families and dark rituals from which there may be no escape.
In the books’ description, ‘Touch the Night’ is compared with both ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and while both comparisons are pretty on point, they don’t do justice to quite how odd this book gets at times. It’s almost like a David Lynch directed episode of Stranger Things, taking inspiration from an alternate world Texas Chainsaw Massacre that was directed by David Cronenberg.
It is a difficult book to review because it is not an easy book to describe while simultaneously doing it justice. There were times I actually laughed out loud reading it, and times I had to put it down because the tension was too much to bear. It switches between hilarious, heartbreaking, horrific, scary and surreal with ease, and the changes are never jarring and always timed to perfection. To say any more would be to delve into spoiler territory and this is one of those books where the less you know going in, the more you will enjoy it.
While the boys are probably two of my favourite characters of any book I have read this year (their comfortable friendship and easy back and forth is a joy to read) ‘Touch the Night’ is packed full of great characters. The boy’s mothers, while polar opposites at the outset, soon find common ground in their search for them once they go missing, and any time spent with them is time well spent. There are also memorable villains in abundance and a lot of periphery characters that get fully fleshed-out personalities and backstories that just add an extra layer to an already engrossing book.
A coming-of-age tale unlike any you have ever read. Touch the Night is everything a horror fan could ever want in a book and a lot more besides. It’s no exaggeration to say that Max Booth III has written what is a strong contender for the best horror novel of 2020.
You can read more reviews of new and upcoming horror releases at
https://www.myindiemuse.com/category/... -
3.5 stars
This is a classic coming of age story that is somewhat predictable yet still wonderfully nostalgic. I appreciated that themes surrounding police brutality and prejudice were woven into the narrative. It certainly made for some timely social commentary. The writing style was not my favourite but I enjoyed the story that was being told.
I would recommend this one to readers looking for a coming of age story that addresses some important themes. -
The most horrifying stress inducing, heart breaking novel I’ve read all year. No, screw that. Many years. Maybe ever. I was not prepared for this. The future of horror is in great hands with Max Booth III. This novel should rocket him to the upper echelon of horror fiction. This book shattered my heart, frayed my nerves, and probably caused me to have hypertension, because as I write this a full 30 minutes after finishing it, my heart is still pounding, my eyes are still tearing, and I just feel exhausted, but exhilarated at the same time, reflecting on this relentless roller coaster of a nightmare, a story that’s going to haunt me for some time. In my top 3 for the year! My highest recommendation!
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Ah, small town horror; an old trope in the horror genre to be sure, but Booth does it very well in TTN. The story takes place largely in Percy, Indiana, a town of about 6000 people. We basically have four main characters-- Josh and Alonzo, two 12yo black kids, and their moms, Mary and Ottessa respectfully. We start off with Josh spending the night at Alonzo's place (well, his moms actually) and around 1AM, the two decide it is time for some exploring of Percy. These are not bad kids per se, although they have a penchant for doing stupid things on occasion (they are 12 after all). They do, however, end up robbing a gas station and assaulting the lone worker there. Worse, they, on their way home meet up with some 'cops' and things turn to shit. The 'cops' degrade them awhile, then take them to an old farmhouse where they are put in straightjackets and dumped in the basement. Something seriously strange is going on and Booth pulls no punches!
The next morning, Ottessa calls the cops to bail out her son (she saw the cops pick them up) but the real cops deny it; they instead concoct a story that the mom's are hiding them from the law because they robbed the store. Mary and Ottessa are at a loss, but they are determined to get their kids back. They only things that seem possible are: 1. the cops killed the kids and are covering it up; 2. some other police force picked them up (unlikely), or; 3. the kids were abducted by some people dressed as cops. The latter seems more and more likely as the cop car was an older model no longer used by 'real' cops. From here on in, the story oscillates between the two kids and their mom's mission to find out and rescue the kids.
Booth (imo) did a very nice job with race relations here, highlighting why black folk are wary of the cops for very good reasons. As readers, however, we know there is something else, something really dark, in the works in Percy. Who are the abductors? What do they want? What the hell is up with time/space around the old farmhouse? I will not go into the plot more, except to say that Mary and Ottessa are quite a duo and they really are on a mission. TTN flows very nicely and never really lets up. This is not a coming of age story (not really my thing) but a full fledged horror romp. You know bad things are going to happen, but just how bad took even my jaded ass by surprise. Kudos to Booth for giving us the ending the book deserved! This was my first taste of Booth but I will be coming back for more. 4.5 stars, rounding down due to some plot holes and some needed but unexplained aspects of the 'family'. -
Review to come
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Max Booth III does it again! I just love his stories so much. Lots of occult/supernatural stuff in this one. I thought it was absolutely wild and so so fun! The characters were kind of hard for me to get on board with initially, I really didn't like anyone. But once I got past the getting to know you's and story setup and got to that freaky ass cornfield, it was blast. And even though I didn't really like any of our main characters personalities, I still found myself rooting for them throughout the story.
4.25 -
’Something Sinister Is Hiding In The Small Town Of Percy, Indiana…’
Have you ever had one of those, ’What The Hell Did I Just Read?’ moments? Yeah, I’m experiencing that now after binge-reading the dark horror novel, TOUCH THE NIGHT, the first book I have ever read by Max Booth III. I guarantee it won’t be my last!
To say Booth writes fully fleshed out characters that you care about is a complete understatement! I have to admit, my Mom Mode went into high gear more than once, wanting to protect Zoey and Josh from the evil around them, much like their badass moms, Ottessa, and Mary, try to do throughout the book.
TOUCH THE NIGHT – is a dark-tension-filled-heartbreaking-horror-cringefest that never lets up. Highly Recommend! -
A very interesting read. This is a pretty long book, but well worth it. Very interesting and disturbing.
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My review of
TOUCH THE NIGHT can be found at
High Fever Books.
When a horror novel opens with a 'your mom' joke as the dedication, you know you're going to be in good hands. It turns out, though, that what I first took as a joke was also a bit of unexpected sweetness from Max Booth III. I began reading Touch the Night just before Mother's Day and over the course of the few days that followed, and this turned out be a surprisingly fitting read. Although it has copious amounts of gore, blood, and general squirm-inducing uneasiness in its pages, and a very strong ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) vibe about it, it's also a really touching ode to motherhood and the lengths parents will go to for their offspring (and vice versa).
It all begins with a night of carousing for teenage friends Josh and Alonzo and ends with them being abducted by the police. Not arrested, but straight-up abducted and trapped in a nightmare of a farmhouse. Their disappearance brings together their respective mothers, Mary and Ottessa, who find themselves on their own in their attempts to find their missing children. Because they're black, Sheriff Keene doesn't believe Mary and Ottessa's claims that the kids were abducted by cops, and the parents have every reason to distrust the police given the current state of race relations between cops and minority communities.
It's fitting, too, that I read Touch the Night just as news was breaking about the release of a video showing the murder of a black unarmed jogger Ahmaud Arbery by two white vigilantes who shot and executed him in the middle of the street. Police had this video since late February but did not press charges against Arbery's murderers, a former police officer and detective for the district attorney, and his son, until early May, after the video went viral and the demands for justice grew too loud for police to continue to ignore. Police violence against black communities is at the core of Touch the Night, and Booth sets his story in 2005, shortly after the Danziger Bridge shootings in the days after Hurricane Katrina, which saw New Orleans Police kill and wound several members of a black family and their friends, all of whom were unarmed.
It's a violent inciting incident that helps inform Josh and Alonzo's view of the world and reading this in the days following the arrest of Arbery's murders, I'll admit that my own ACAB views were high. I had little trouble imagining these teenage friends obsessing over the YouTube footage and news reports of the police-sanctioned massacre and attempted coverup of their own crimes, or in seeing the plain reality of police versus minorities that comes to define Mary and Ottessa's relationship with Sheriff Keene and the other police officers of Percy, Indiana. If anything, their plights were only further solidified by real-world atrocities that, in America, are common day occurrences. When a black kid goes missing, nobody cares; when a cute, white blonde girl goes missing, it's national headline news with 'round-the-clock coverage. Booth touches on this phenomenon and understands that it helps give his own villains the cover they need to operate so freely.
And operate they do...
Over the course of Touch the Night, Booth crafted several scenes that gave me the heebie jeebies and grossed me the hell out. His insane child-abducting policemen, who go by the mysterious names of Father and Uncle, were absolutely disgusting, and the things they do to Josh and Alonzo were gut-twisting in their depravities. And without fail, Booth constantly found a way to one-up himself with each successive scene as things go from from bad to worse for Josh and Alonzo, as well as their mothers. This book is absolutely wild.
Where Booth really seals the deal, though, is in the characters. Each of them are all so real and flawed that it's hard not root for them. Even Ottessa, nobody's idea of Mother of the Year, wormed her way into my heart. She's so damn abrasive, but also funny, constantly working hard at hiding her real self, but we get enough glimmers of who she is under her brash, crusty self-imposed facade that you really do want to see her win. Her relationship with Mary makes them a perfect odd couple, the two could not be more different, but it works, and it's a blast reading them as they Thelma & Louise their way through Percy, wanting their sons and wanting revenge against the men who took them, and the system that allows for their kids to be snatched away with ease.
Touch the Night has a lot of heart to it, amidst all the blood, and it handles the complexities of its social messaging well, never feeling forced or repetitive in all its ACAB glory. Put all together, it can make for some hard reading, but it's also brilliantly executed and holds a number of surprises throughout the entirety of its page count. This is a horror fans horror book, and a splatterpunk fan's wet dream, with touches of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, occultism, cosmic scares, and a whole lot of the unexpected. It is, in a word, fantastic. -
That was the BIGGEST waste of $45 that I will never get back! Skip this stupid and long ass and boring book. Seriously. All these 4 and 5 star ratings.....they must have gotten a free copy! I won't BS you when it comes to rating a book.
Here is my video review of this book from my Youtube Channel; AreYouIntoHorror?
https://youtu.be/NEw0IZKsKc0
Read the synopsis and you get the best part of this stupid, and WAY over hyped boring dumb horror tinged fantasy tale! This was so bad that it will qualify for if not be THE worst book of 2020 for me!
Not even going to do a review except say that this would have been a good book if Booth would have cut out the middle 300 pages, yes this is at 380 pages, three hundred pages too long. It started with great potential, then at page 48 it went straight to hell and never came back till the last and most stupid of all 26 pages!!! Skip this! -
Holy. Mother.
Review to come for Sci Fi and Scary.
I. Have. Thoughts. My. Feelings. Are. Trashed.
Review from
www.scifiandscary.com :
Water dripping. Insects feasting. A woman whispering, ‘Don’t listen to them.’ So close he can feel her breath on his face.” – Max Booth III, Touch the Night
Last summer, I experienced Max Booth III’s novel, Carnivorous Lunar Activities (CLA). I say “experienced” because one does not simply READ a Booth book. I approached it as I always do, expecting the best and ready to be entertained. That book OWNED me. It’s amazing. Touch the Night is my experience with CLA but multiplied by 100. 400 pages of “what will happen next” means there a finger grooves on my Kindle screen from flipping so quickly to the next page.
“This is how monsters laugh.” – Max Booth III, Touch the Night
The basic premise of this novel might be “two friends make bad choices and find themselves thrown into a nightmare they never expected”. That’s not it though. I am awful at blurbs or synopsis writing. The one above will serve readers well – it doesn’t give away too much. This book has everything I love: small town, young protagonists, horrible awful monsters, a breakneck pace, and unique storytelling. I wish I could adequately convey just how overcome I was by this book. And by the end? I was YELLING. Well played, Booth. Well played.
“Destruction as sacrifice.” – Max Booth III, Touch the Night
This is the part where character and plot or pacing is discussed, but I don’t want to do any of that. What I will say is that this book is in solid contention for my top read of 2020. Last year I read 175 books and I am on track for the same this year; Touch the Night is THAT good. After reading two novels from this author I can say that his work is versatile, talented, and an automatic buy for me. I am also a little mad at him. You’ll see why. Go pre-order this book. -
This book is WILD. It just keeps unfolding in all these dark and surprising ways. Super compelling, I could barely put it down.
-
Holy kittens this book was something else.
Touch The Night is a titty twisting, ball punching adventure through suburban hell.
If you enjoy books that make you feel like you just snorted 10 lines, dropped some acid and base jumped of Mount Everest... This book is for you.
Go in blind and come out traumatised. What else could you want from a horror novel. -
A post I made on my FB, to let my friends know how it was going:
CR: 115 pages in, and I’m scared shitless for these two poor kids, seriously oh fucking fuck and I mean OH FUCK!!! Like not “haha funny” oh fuck either, I’m talking 100% pure terror OH FUCKING FUCK. 😱😭☠️
And now that I’m finished, the ENTIRE FUCKING BOOK WAS LIKE THAT JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!
It rules.
5/5 Skulls
☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️ -
Loved it.
-
Edit: oh no oh no no! What happened? Aw man! Admittedly, I wrote the below review with 25 pages left of the book because I was so enthralled with it. But then a piece of information about the main villain is revealed as a plot twist and it’s...borderline homophobic. ( Perhaps just simply homophobic.) Do we really need to make the demon police man gay? Do we really need to make the demon police man gay AND have it revealed that the man he just strung up and carved flesh out of, is his ex-Lover Richard? It made me really upset. Damn! I really enjoyed this book up until this exact moment.
It was right around here that I was just like “oh. No.” . I wish this was never added to the story. What was the point of that? Sincerely I’m trying to understand what that added. The author, to my knowledge, is not a member of the queer community and I’m not sure it would matter even if he was. It’s also worth noting that Max Booth III is white. I read this under the impression that it was written by a black voice and while I do think it’s possible for white authors to tell black stories, I’m just not sure if he did it in an authentic way. Nor do I think it’s my place, because I am white as well. I do think these themes are important, but I’m not sure if it’s as impactful coming from a white man. Does that make sense? I don’t know, that’s a whole other discussion.
However, I am gay, and the reveal of our antagonist being gay was a very random and unnecessary addition to the plot. I mean this dude does some terrible, fucked up things. And to just casually make him homosexual!?!? FOR WHY? And that ending? What was the adventure for!?!? What was all of that hard work for!? An ending to a story can be morbid and bleak and STILL be redeemable. I found nothing redeemable about the ending to this book.
Anyway, here’s my original 5 star review. I’ve learned my lesson to not write the review before you finish the book in it’s ENTIRETY. Observe how 25 pages can make a huge difference when you decide to make your vile, main antagonist gay, with an ending that has absolutely 0 redeeming qualities:
- you know what - no. The more I let this sit a marinate, the more I’m deciding that you all don’t get to see my thesis paper worthy 5 star review of this book. I connected so many good themes of small town prejudice and racism to this novel along with John Fram’s “Bright Lands” and Adam Caesar’s “Clown In a Corn Field.” But now, after having finished this novel completely I can tell you why Touch The Night is separate from those two masterpieces:
1. The endings of Bright Lands and Clown show how people can live past their trauma. Life goes on and not everyone in the world is terrible.
2. The gays in those novels are the heroes. Not the villains.
Alright that’s it. 1.5 stars for the cover and because it’s actually very scary. But oh boy, what a mess that finale was. -
I'd heard good things about this one, but holy crap!
This book is bizarre, scary, heartbreaking, creepy and just...everything!
Aside from eerie supernatural horror, the author brings us real life horror dealing with race and the reality of being Black and poor in America (and yes...being Black in front of a cop).
I'd like to say it was a non-stop read, but I kept taking breaks - largely because I thought the author was going to completely destroy my heart (spoiler alert - he just about did).
Not for the faint of heart because it does get graphic and it really pulls no punches.
But what a read! -
Max has perfected, possibly my favorite in this skill, the art of colloquial narratives. This book is a flex in that muscle.
There wasn't a single moment in this story that was predictable. Each page was an exploration, a new frontier. I was smacked by shock and disgust. At times I was laughing out loud. Actual LOLZ. But for the most part I felt dread creep into every open space of my body.
Two friends, both boys, run out in the night and find themselves in a heap of trouble. It's up to the moms to save them. I won't say much more other than, "What the fuck, Max?" -
I was immediately drawn in by the awesome cover art, and I was hoping the actual story would be just as good. It did not disappoint. This was such a good book; it got my attention from the first couple of pages and I read the whole thing in less than 24 hrs. I can't lie, I was kind of let down by the ending, but overall I loved it.
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I am a huge fan of Max Booth III. He’s one of my favorite authors to read. When I received the book Touch the Night to review, I was so excited. Max’s books have a rhythm of their own. Most peppered with humor as well as scares galore.
This book was a little different then what I’ve come to identify as a Max Booth III book. It’s darker, more brutal and with hard to read parts.
Josh and Alonzo are just two African American young boys. One from a fairly decent family, one raised alone by an alcoholic mother one that Alonzo would rather not be around and harbors anger and embarrassment. Josh is staying over at Alonzo’s house and he can’t take one second more. He wakes up Josh and decide to sneak out after midnight to roam the streets and see what excitement they can find.
The end up at a convenience store alone with a clerk, planning to steal a few goodies and get out before any cops happen to wander in. When the clerk confronts them, Alonzo tries to swap a pornographic picture of his mother for their goods but ill remarks from the clerk cause a Alonzo to snap and beat the clerk to a pulp.
They flee the scene aware now police may have been notified and they decided to try to run home when they are stopped by two “policeman” for questioning…..
Here is where the story swerves into the darkness as the kids are kidnapped by “Father” and “Uncle” who are poorly dressed as police officers and hauled away to be part of a nightmare.
No spoilers here as any more information on the story will give away too much of the shock value as Josh and Alonzo scramble to find a way to escape the human monsters they have been delivered too. My only complaint is that there is too many pages spent on the two families trying to track the boys down and not on the horrors that have befallen the boys and those sections are terrifying!
I always recommend Max Booth III books and I would love to read your review as well. Parts of the story, like I referenced above, slows down the action but once you get to the meat of it? You won’t be able to stop. Enjoy! -
First things first.
I didn't find this book racist. As a POC I was worried that the book was going to be racist and just filled with the N word because the book is about Black young men and cops.
The N word was used in the book but in ways that made sense. You could tell the author wasn't just writing the N word for fun.
On to the story itself. The book is nail biting! It is not only scary in a creepy sort of way, it's scary in a maybe you need extra anxiety meds sort of way. I was screaming at one point for the characters to run. (I don't think they heard me)
The characters were so well written. The love of a mother is shown so well with everything the mothers go through to look out for their children. I love how flawed the characters were, they were battling their inner demons as well as outer threats of evil.
This book is definitely worth the read. -
Wow.
It's hard to describe what this novel is (like all of Max Booth's work, really). But think Stranger Things meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets what Stephen King's It would've been without the cocaine and the Nyquil. TOUCH THE NIGHT is a raw, breathless and demanding novel that will leave you exhausted after reading two or three chapters. It's one of these books that literally requires fortitude to get through, but that rewards you accordingly.
Coming from a small, isolated town myself, the themes of laziness, corruption and idiosyncratic living really hit hard. Living in such place if it isn't a choice can really feel claustrophobic and hopeless and TOUCH THE NIGHT captured the feeling quite well. A really good novel. -
Max does such an incredible job of creating this cloud of dread that follows his protagonists, and Touch the Night is no exception. I was genuinely stressed out for Josh and Alonzo as these two 12 year old boys try to survive this nightmare. In between the scares, you get plenty of laughs reading these boys act like...well goofy kids. 5 stars and can’t wait to read more from the ghoulish Max Booth.
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Creepy good thriller about two twelve year old boys who run afoul of a couple of otherworldly cops named Father and Uncle. The two cops kidnap people to use in their ancient black magic rites in an effort to resurrect Mother. Plenty of suspense and action. Highly recommended
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I was disappointed in this book, after reading so many enthusiastic reviews, I thought it was going to be fantastic.
There is just so much rambling filler and very little action. No back story about The Family, I skimmed most of the book.
Having said that, the characters are great, I loved the relationship between the two boys, and the mothers too - when they join up, they make a formidable team.
I feel there was a really good story here that lacked development. The Family was made up of some awesome, disgusting beings that I would have loved to have spent more time with.
The ending seemed rushed, but it was okay.
Many of the reviews stated gore, torture and grossness overload, but I've read much, much worse.
I would still recommend this book though, you may just love it!! -
DNF. No thanks.