Book #75 The Sacrifice Box

The Sacrifice Box by Martin Stewart
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

With thanks to Penguin Random House and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Hmmm. Clearly aimed at a young readership, nevertheless I accepted the invitation to read The Sacrifice Box enticed by the considerable hype about the book. First off, for me, there is some ambiguity about the location. Definitely on an island, New York City is mentioned but I was puzzled by references where price is mentioned in Pounds Sterling - £1.70 for example. Martin Stewart is a native of Glasgow, Scotland; why would he set his story in the USA?

Sep, Arkle, Mack, Lamb and Hadley. Five youngsters on their own rite of passage. Doing what young folk do, one long, hot summer when they stumble across a stone box hidden in the forest and for some reason they decide to make a sacrifice to the box, something pertinent to each of them, that should stay in the box forever, like an old, stuffed teddy-bear:

They make a pact:

never return to the box at night;
never visit it alone;
never take back their offerings.

Four years later their ‘friendship’ has drifted, they have pretty much forgotten about the box, until…. someone has broken the pact… Horrifying events start to occur, their sacrifices come back to haunt them with terrifying consequences. Perhaps they weren’t the first children to come across the box…

SPOILER ALERT

There are moments of humour particularly with Arkle’s dialogue. But… I struggled to persevere with a plot that contains so much violence to animals. Zombie animals for goodness sake? Much of this I found most distasteful. Maybe I am too sensitive, but considering the book’s target audience, I don’t think so.

2.5 stars from me.

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