A compelling, eerie new novel from the internationally bestselling author of Let the Right One In.“At the top of his game, Lindqvist gives Stephen King and John Saul at their best a run for the money.” –Library Journal (starred) “Dubbed the Stephen King of Sweden, Lindqvist lives up to the billing.” –New York PostFour families wake up one morning in their trailer on an ordinary campsite. … Post
Four families wake up one morning in their trailer on an ordinary campsite. However, during the night something strange has happened. Everything outside the camping grounds has disappeared, and the world has been transformed into an endless expanse of grass. The sky is blue, but there is no sign of the sun; there are no trees, no flowers, no birds. And every radio plays nothing but the songs of sixties pop icon Peter Himmelstrand.
As the holiday-makers try to come to terms with what has happened, they are forced to confront their deepest fears and secret desires. Past events that each of them has tried to bury rise to the surface and take on terrifying physical forms. Can any of them find a way back to reality?
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This was very sadly a bust for me, I got this book from NetGalley and was so looking forward to it, unfortunately, I found this impossible to get into.
For myself, I Am Behind You by John Ajvide Lindqvist was confusing, strange and extremely weird. And don’t even get me started on being inside the dog’s head, I’ve visited some heads over my many years of literature but think this was the first time I’ve ever seen things from a canine point of view very wacky indeed.
I also had no clue most of the time about what was occurring, even finding myself skipping to the end (which I never do) to see if it got any clearer further on and to maybe provide a touch of clarity to the perplexing storyline.
It didn’t, so I decided to down tools, life’s too short for reading books that I am not enjoying.
As a result of not finishing, I’m not leaving a star rating as I feel it wouldn’t be quite fair considering.
(I got to 28%) so not enough I feel to make an overall judgement.
Here’s Hoping this will be a better fit for yourself.
Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for providing me with a free arc of I Am Behind You. This is my own honest opinion.
Reviewed By Beckie Bookworm
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I’m not exactly sure how I feel about this novel. There was so much potential and so much that I did really like but at the same time, I wasn’t sure I liked how we got there.
The story starts with four families in four different caravans all waking up to discover that they are no longer in the camping grounds where they parked the night before. They are in a huge empty field with no sun in the sky, just ambient light from somewhere. The families try to discover what happened but they are also experiencing various degrees of cooperation and anger.
(minor spoilers below) I love that main idea. There is so much potential there: different dimensions, some super powered alien, different states of mind, an accident in reality. At first the story progresses beautifully. The characters are easy to remember and we get flashbacks to flush them out as real people. Unfortunately somewhere around a third or maybe half of the way through, things started falling apart for me. I started to actively not like a couple of the characters. No big deal; not liking the “bad guy” of the story is normal. Except I’m not sure if she was supposed to be the “bad guy”. Spoiler alert, the character is Molly. It seemed that when Lindqvist needed someone to do something bad, he made Molly do it. He quasi-explained it near the end of the book and he did a great job of doing so. He made me feel totally sorry for what happened to Molly as a toddler; my God, her mother was so selfish and mean! This was one of the times I was in tears. But, at the same time, it left me confused about my feelings for Molly. I suppose that’s like life though. Good people can do stupid things for no easy-to-understand reason. That was actually a huge strength in this book. The characters were so rich and real. I probably cried three or four times at some of the events that happened to the characters. I put myself in their place and felt for what was happening. But then I would go back to the plot and realize there did not seem to be one. There was a series of strange events that kept happening to which the characters would respond, but that was it. No direction, no arc. Just “how will you respond if I introduce zombie-type monsters?” or “what about acid rain?” It made me feel that Lindqvist did not have a final ending in mind as he wrote the book and that he made it up as he went. Then rather than editing that first draft and weaving the ending throughout the entire novel so that it made sense, he left it alone. A confusing and not-quite-complete story that had so much potential. (3.5 stars that I’m actually rounding down in order to not diminish my other books rated at 4 stars)