Genre: Horror
Published: Independently Published by the author, June 2023
My Rating: 4/5 stars
"Was this how some families grieved? By tearing into each other?"
Cosmic horror with a heartfelt coming-of-age/grief narrative at its core? Sign me up anytime please! By the light of Dead Stars delivered just that. With its cast of developed characters to root for, it gave me chills both of emotion, fright and actual excitement all contained in a 400 page narrative.
The story:
13-year old Zelda Ruiz’s life is turned upside down overnight. A family vacation ends in tragedy when a devastating car-crash kills both her parents and leaves her an orphan at the center of a custody-battle between her grandparents and slightly estranged uncle Mark. With the verdict pending, she temporarily moves into the remote and rural town of Greywood Bay with her uncle. She soon learns she isn’t the only one haunted by darkness here; there’s an ancient evil buried deep within the town of Greywood. One that infests the foundations of the homes and seeps into the inhabitants, leading to stranger and disturbing behaviours. It begins with a sculptures strange statues, a passerby’s vacant look in their eyes… It soon turns to disappearances and more. Can Mark, Zelda and her new-found friends escape before it’s too late?
What I loved:
By the Light of Dead Stars is a combination of coming of age, grief and cosmic horror, and if you know me; that’s a recipe for my personal catnip. Thinks Steven King’s It, Craig Davidson's Saturday Night Ghost Club or Black Mouth by Ronald Malfi. It’s the existential dread and feeling of being unmoored and out of control that blends those elements so perfectly. It works in those, and it worked in this book.
Highlights include the setting, the character development and the slow-burning dread at the center of it all. Over the course of the story, I truly came to love Zelda and Mark, and their slowly building trust. Both carry deep wounds from past events that make them reluctant to trust, but they grow and learn from interacting with each other, and develop a beautifully wholesome dynamic over time. Zelda’s friendships with Mara and Ali, although lacking that same depth, also added to a lot of that “feel-good-vibe” that perfectly balances out the horror-elements.
Van Wey did a great job of bringing the town of Greywood Bay, and the greater Lost Coast Area to life through his words. The tension and feeling of “off-ness” is present from the start, and the slowburn dread and intrigue of what’s truly behind this veil of mystery kept me hooked from start to finish.
What I didn’t love:
Firstly, this is a slowburn of a novel, which didn’t bother me, but I know will turn-off some people. Secondly, and this one is all me: I didn’t realize this was the start of a series when I started it, and to be fair, I’m not certain it needed to be. One of the hallmarks of cosmic horror is that not all questions need to be answered, and I was fine with the way the story was wrapped up here.
Lastly, and this one is petty: the overabundance of videogame references got on my nerves at some point. It was giving me “how you do, fellow kids?”-vibes…
Overall: easy recommendation for cosmic horror fans. Readalikes: It, The Saturday Night Ghost Club, Black Mouth, Stranger Things.
You can finds this book here on Goodreads.
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