The Stray Reader

Author:	Alan Shivers
Genre(s):	➡️ Young Adult Horror ➡️ Teenage Slasher
Series? Series Order:	✅ Yes Book 1 of 3
Goodreads Rating:	⭐ 4.12 (101 ratings; 62 reviews)
Personal Rating:	⭐ 2 / 5 Overall

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🛑 Spoiler Warning 🛑

I might be recounting events, characters, and themes so THIS MIGHT BE FULL OF SPOILERS.

If you’d like to read a review with the spoilers hidden, kindly scroll to the bottom to read my spoiler-free summary in the ‘Recommendation’ section or head to my Goodreads post for a more detailed version with spoilers removed. You don’t need an account to read it. 🙂

BLURB

Welcome to Europea Halls. Only the select few have made it into these prestigious dorms in the capital of the EU, Brussels.

When six best teenage friends get stalked by a serial killer, the campus is on high alert. As the body count piles up, it seems the killer knows a thing or two about slasher movies. Can these girls fight back in time to discover the truth behind the gruesome murders, or will no-one live to tell the tale?

A Ya Slasher Novel inspired by 90s Slasher Movies such as “Scream” , “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and “Urban Legend” with a modern European twist.

Who will the Final Girl be or have the rules changed this time around?

Source: Goodreads

🌟Review (2/5) 🌟

A slasher novel reminiscent of the movie ‘Scream’ and the book ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ that leaves a lot of room for depth.

This is one of those books that gives a good nod to its inspirations but as a standalone is a little lacking. It really gives a lot of ‘Scream’ vibes with the characters, the dialogue, the self-awareness of itself being a horror/slasher piece of literature, downright to the illogical character decisions. But unfortunately, the latter and the other elements of the book overshadowed everything else for me.

Plot

I love the premise of this book. A killer is on the loose targeting a circle of friends from a prestigious school? Yes please. The first chapter set the thriller tone really well too. A murder right out of the gate, a pool of suspects, and mysterious texts. I was so in.

Unfortunately, as the story progressed the character decisions started to get illogical, and it kept piling on making me really irritated. Because now the plot is driving the narrative but it’s completely going against rationale. The first one I gave a pass: During the first murder, as the tension rises because she’s aware there’s an intruder in her house, Alzbeta (the character) was spamming her group chat for her friends to call the cops. Her rationalization for not doing so herself is that she needs to stay focused.

Alzbeta: Call the cops now, I’m home!

No more noise is coming from upstairs. Should I just stay here? I could call the cops myself, but what if I get distracted? I need to stay focused. I know I can count on the girls.

I had to pause at that moment and ask ‘what?’ Focusing on the danger you’re in doesn’t mean calling help that would come as soon as possible while getting the hell out of the house? Focusing means going through an intermediary channel – an unresponsive one at that – instead of going directly to the intended recipient where you’re gonna have to use the same thing to reach both? It just… It didn’t make sense but I gave it pass. It was probably for a slasher thriller scene that needed to be fulfilled.

However, like I said, stupid decisions by the characters kept happening. Despite demanding for security from the police the girls would sneak out causing their death, they would go to a party where there’s no police escort inside the room (I have a gripe with that too) and continue on this narrative to go to places to ‘distract themselves’ despite the fresh murders in their path. It just felt like the plot needed to be more intricate to make the scenes work but the easy way out won.

I also kept wondering how they keep hopping to their ‘favorite spots’ but they keep saying ‘we haven’t been here since…’ Sometimes it doesn’t even make sense. For example, they went to a cafe called CLOF which they call is their ‘usual coffee place’ yet when the someone mentioned the name, Ingvild goes sentimental and says something like ‘oh that place. It reminds me of…’ and another one goes ‘it’s overpriced but it has the best coffee in town.’ If you’ve already been going there regularly, why revisit this conversation and act all sentimental? It should just be an automatic ‘yeah makes sense, let’s go’ type of situation, no?

My last concern is the placement of the text message signature of the killings. I think sending those messages before someone actually dies makes the scene so anticlimactic. Since you already know that the character’s going to die, if they don’t die in an interesting way, the scene falls flat. That’s exactly how I felt on the second murder. Since the text came before the killer made an appearance, I lost interest. My internal thoughts were along the lines of “Okay, she’s gonna die. Unless there’s a critical clue here, I don’t care how.” It would’ve made a lot more impact of the killer sent the message to everyone else in the group once he killed one. Because then, it sends a message to the others saying ‘I got one again, you’re next’ which would’ve made the whole thing scarier.

Characters

There was an effort shown to create character depth but because the characters are too self-aware it became a ‘tell, not show’ flow so the execution also felt lacking.

There’s literally one character everyone calls ‘momma’ which I felt was pretty weird because she doesn’t really have that big of an age gap with everybody else and nothing she does show a maturity level great enough to embody that persona.

The LGBTQIA+ character was supposed to be grappling with public acceptance but instead of showing that by her dorm mates actually dissing her or her ex-girlfriend showing signs of being ashamed to see her in public, the characters just kept narrating these things over and over. There’s no subtlety to it so there was no emotional investment for me as a reader.

The lack of character depth is what made the second murder all the more uninteresting. Since she got the text signature before she died, I already know she’s dying. I have no investment in her character so why am I going to cheer for her to survive? Sure, she has a thing with her mom but there’s really no extreme interaction with her mom that shows me that and warrants a deep investment on my part. Again, that issue was just a narration from her and her friends’ perspectives.

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot of potential for this series. Individually, the elements are theoretically a banger on its own – the diverse characters, the interesting setting, the twists, the self-awareness trope that it knows it’s a slasher piece of literature, etc. However, the way they’re meshed together needs a lot of work.

Going by the current ratings I seem to be in the minority though so there’s a big chance that most YA slasher fans would appreciate it more. The sequel is also already out and honestly, I’d be willing to check it out to see if things improved because I can sincerely see the potential. Grab a copy of ‘Europea Halls’ by Alan Shivers from Kindle Unlimited.