Rating:
5/5 Just Desserts
Give me the short version:
Hope, NT, is a gentle place where nothing terrible happens. Until it does.
I won a signed copy of this in a Kendall Reviews promotion!
Which just goes to show, even when you're laser-focused on writing and spending less time on the social medias, it still pays to keep a whale eye on what your favourite reviewers are up to.
Mr Cull sure knows how to pace a ghost story. Hope and Walker is a beautiful and perfectly contained short piece, vividly easing you in to life in the drying remnants of a gold rush town.
The protagonist's young voice and perspective ring clear as a bell, and especial kudos to the sensitive treatment of the subject matter. This is definitely a read for those who prefer their horror with a literary bent. And even for those who claim "I don't read horror."
Favourite bit:
"We were both 10. But he was dead. And I sat drawing him."
ADDENDUM!
Shortly after I posted this, Hope and Walker was shortlisted for the 2017 Paul Haines Award for Long Fiction.