14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
another good one from Doug Clegg, January 18, 2005
This review is from: Afterlife (Paperback)
Julie Hutchinson's husband "Hut" has been murdered, and she is having trouble recovering from his death. She believes that he visits her at night while she is sleeping. She also begins to fit together fragments of his life that were unknown to her while he was alive, and they fit together into a rather strange whole --- including evidence that Hut was part of a secret project when he was a child that tested psychic abilities in children.
AFTERLIFE was a page-turner and a good, fast read. It was well-written and suspenseful and has some great twists and turns. The book seemed quite different from other Clegg works that I have read. There were some creepy moments, but the book didn't really seem likea mega-horror book to me. But don't let that stop you from reading it!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Can The Dead Walk? Talk?, January 31, 2005
This review is from: Afterlife (Paperback)
Julie Hutchinson's world takes a nosedive when she is informed that her husband has been murdered. As she tries to deal with the horrific event, she slowly comes to realize that there are many parts of her husband's past that have been kept secret from her.
Julie tries to uncover the truth of her husband's past. While doing so she begins having erotic dreams about him. Her daughter thinks she can talk to him. Her mother puts her in contact with a TV psychic. She contacts her husband's ex who is in an asylum. Eventually she begins to doubt reality. The whole story culminates in a dramatic conclusion that can give readers shivers.
This is a very interesting although a little slow to build at first. The histories of psychic studies, open and covert, tie into Julie's dilemmas. It was refreshing to find an ending that was not obvious right from the start. A fine book from a talented author (although a little shorter than previous works).
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clegg at his very best, December 15, 2004
This review is from: Afterlife (Paperback)
If you haven't read a Clegg novel yet, now is your chance to do so. Not only is Afterlife a great horror story, it also stands as one of Clegg's most suspenseful tale yet. This one has all the elements of a classic in the making.
Julie's life is turned upside down when she learns that her husband was brutally murdered. She is left alone to grieve with her young daughter and her strange teenage stepson. Everyone around her wants to help; her sister Melanie, her mother, her friends, her therapist... Yet no one is able to help her forget the pane of her husband's death.
But as she tries her best to return to her normal life, strange things happen to Julie. She dreams of strange, erotic thoughts. Her husband's body disappears from the morgue. She she learns about her husband's past, a past he had kept hidden from her all these years. A stranger enters her home at night and disappears. As Julie searches for the truth, she feels the constant threat of being watched, and the nightmares become more and more real. The only person she can trust is a strange television psychic who will try to help her through this ordeal.
Or is he? Clegg creates a great webb of paranoia that prevents you from trusting any of the characters except Julie. And even Julie is a flawed character. Sometimes, you root for her, and sometimes you just want to slap her in the face to make her open her eyes and accept the truth for what it truly is. Such a character only turns a very good story into an even greater one.
This story is similar to some of the genre's best. Rosemary's Baby comes to mind. Like Levin's amazing tale of suspense, Clegg creates a suspenseful tale that never lets go of the grip it has on you. You can't help yourself; you just want to keep on turning the pages way past your bedtime. And what Clegg does best is write about the grief Julie is going through. Some of the scenes early on in the story are just heart wrenching.
Douglas Clegg is fast becoming one of the greatest new voice in horror fiction, and Afterlife is the perfect example of his amazing talent. Suspenseful, full of horror, and vastly entertaining, Afterlife might very well be the best horror novel of the year!
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