REVIEW:

Going into this “literary novel of social horror,” I had two expectations: 1) I wouldn’t like it given the mostly-unfavorable early reviews, and 2) I’d get to snarkily say in my own review how I threw up my hands and yelled “Reprieve!” when I didn’t finish it.

Reprieve (noun) = “The cancellation or postponement of a punishment.”

To my surprise, I ended up needing no reprieve from the book at all, though I’m well aware others may view reading it as a punishment. It really does come down to expectations. If you pick it up for the HORROR, you’ll be bored by the backstory. If you snag a copy for the SOCIAL, you’ll have a better outcome.

The basic concept is that contestants have entered a full-contact escape room / haunted house in 1997, and if they make it all the way through without yelling the titular safe word they’ll win $60,000. But something has gone wrong. Readers bounce from gory scenes in the house to interrogation-type interludes to (lengthy) backstories of the characters. Said characters are diverse, which I loved, though their diversity serves the book’s effort to examine race issues, gender politics, and financial disparity.

This is James Han Mattson’s sophomore novel, and I applaud his attempt to feed his audience a horrific meal with a little meat on its bones. It just definitely won’t be to everyone’s tastes.

My thanks to the author and William Morrow / Scene of the Crime for the gifted copy to review via NetGalley. Reprieve is now available.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

A chilling and blisteringly relevant literary novel of social horror centered around a brutal killing that takes place in a full-contact haunted escape room — a provocative exploration of capitalism, hate politics, racial fetishism, and our obsession with fear as entertainment.

On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities, booby-traps, and ghoulishly costumed actors. If the group can endure these horrors without shouting the safe word, “reprieve,” they’ll win a substantial cash prize — a startling feat accomplished only by one other group in the house’s long history. But before they can complete the challenge, a man breaks into the cell and kills one of the contestants.

Those who were present on that fateful night lend their points of view: Kendra Brown, a teenager who’s been uprooted from her childhood home after the sudden loss of her father; Leonard Grandton, a desperate and impressionable hotel manager caught in a series of toxic entanglements; and Jaidee Charoensuk, a gay international student who came to the United States in a besotted search for his former English teacher. As each character’s journey unfurls and overlaps, deceit and misunderstandings fueled by obsession and prejudice are revealed, forcing all to reckon with the ways in which their beliefs and actions contributed to a horrifying catastrophe.

An astonishingly soulful exploration of complicity and masquerade, Reprieve combines the psychological tension of classic horror with searing social criticism to present an unsettling portrait of this tangled American life.