The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Well wasn’t that a quick little read! There is something to be said for novels that take place over a short span of time - and in this particular example - a span of 24 hours (give or take). The pacing was excellent, the cabin and all of the characters within were easily visualized in my mind's eye (I have always wanted to use that term - check that off my bucket list!) and I accredit that to the whole narrative essentially being a one act, one set screenplay. I guess there is also something to be said about my recent social life, seeing as I was able to dedicate 5+ hours to this book on a Saturday evening....

But, ashamed I am not - quite the opposite actually. I think I texted and/or bragged about my binge-reading (is this akin to the acceptability of binge-watching Netflix originals yet?) to at least five people. And even if I wasn’t unreasonably proud of my weekend accomplishment, it's not as though I had a choice in finishing this book at the speed that I did. Once you get to the good part (and by that I mean once you get past the not quite as thrilling, yet still strangely intriguing pages detailing how to catch grasshoppers through the eyes of an 8 yr old child), the only acceptable excuse for putting it down would be spontaneous human combustion. Seriously. You NEED to know what is waiting for you on the next page. I refuse to believe anything contrary to that.

A lot of people probably won't enjoy the ending, but likely for reasons different than those that prevented me from falling head over heels in love with it. I am more than fine with ambiguous endings, we even prefer them in many cases. But Nicole is slightly confused as to why Paul Tremblay made the decision to purposely trip me up with his unnecessary and seemingly meaningless change of POV in the final chapters. I don’t think it served any purpose except to confuse Nicole and cause us to wonder if there was a mind fuck on the horizon that would throw me for a loop. We didn’t really get it. (See what I did there?)



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