The
events that propelled teenager Chris Buckley into an ever-escalating horror
story are coming to a head. The question is, will Chris and his loved ones
survive?
Welcome
to Solitary, North Carolina, and welcome to Hurt,
the fourth and final novel in Travis Thrasher’s Solitary series.
It
is in Hurt that Chris (and the
reader) gets all of his questions answered, and the answers are usually
terrifying. He learns he’s been selected to assume the family “responsibility”
from his dying great-grandfather, except that responsibility is a kind of
ownership of evil.
And
it is in Hurt that Chris discovers
what faith means. But he may lose his life, and his girlfriend Kelsey may lose
her life as well.
Thrasher
maintains a fine tension between what looks like the regular life of a
high-school teenager and the growing horror of what is happening around that
teenager. It’s no mean feat to consistently move back and forth between normal
and abnormal (or paranormal), and Thrasher pulls it off. He makes it look
almost effortless – which usually means some serious sweat equity went into the
writing and rewriting.
As
in the other books in the Solitary series, the right is tight. Chapters are
short, likely to appeal to the Young adult audience the book is aimed at. How
the book is structured has the effect of propelling the action of the story
forward, and forcing the reader to confront the same choices Chris must confront
and make. This emphasis on brevity continually heightens the tension, and makes
Hurt a very fast read (and you want
to keep reading).
It
is just the right conclusion to the story. Thrasher has managed to maintain
the interest and excitement across all four of the books in the series, and it’s
quite an achievement.
Related Reviews of the Solitary Series:
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