I will start off by saying that I do not usually read horror, however I was intrigued by Sarah Lotz’s book The Three last year and when I read it I loved every last page. Sarah Lotz and Louis Greenberg collaborate on books under the name S.L. Grey, and together they wrote The Mall.Once again Lotz has set an interesting premise which caught my attention.
Dan works in the bookshop in the mall, he hates the dull job and doesn’t particularly like most of the people he works with. Rhoda is babysitting for her cousin. She leaves the boy in the bookstore while she goes to score some cocaine, however when she gets back the boy is gone and no one seems to even remember seeing him with her. Furious at Dan for lying about seeing them she accosts him by his car when he leaves and bullies him into letting her back into the mall after hours to find the boy. After taking a wrong turn in one of the corridors behind the shops with Dan last saw the boy, the two find themselves lost. As they go deeper and deeper beneath the mall strange text message start appearing on their phones and they realise they are begin watched.
When they do make it back to the mall it is to find a whole new world which S.L. Grey has put a huge amount of thought into. Upon first arriving there it seems to be just the same as their own world, but the further in they go the more disturbing this world is revealed to be. As horrific as this place was, I found myself glued to the book, eager to know more. The world building in this book is beautifully done and Rhoda and Dan’s reactions to everything are spot on.
I found this book to very creepy more than anything, to the point where I was uneasy about turning off the light when I went to bed after reading it one night. It was a very interesting read, one which will play on your mind for a while after finishing it.
So Many eBooks, So Little Time 