Review: "The Thicket" by Noelle W. Ihli

The Thicket by Noelle W. Ihli
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Slashers don't need to have deep plots, but they do need to be entertaining. They also need suspense that pays off, creative kills, and some sense of motivation for the killer. I loved the premise and setting of "The Thicket" and the story started out great, but the potential just fell a bit flat.

**SPOILERS**

The two kills at the beginning were setup and executed perfectly! Unfortunately, this was the high point of the book. There is literally not another kill until like the last 15%, and despite being written from multiple perspectives - one of which being the killer - you never really get a sense of motivation. He wasn't retained as an employee of the haunted attraction at the heart of the story, and decided he liked killing people..? I guess.

Ok, so the killer was a flat character with little depth and development (the old security guard with crappy orthotic shoes guarding a *sixty acre* corn maze was a better developed character), so what about the kills? Well... There were not that many. Five total. Including the two in the opening scene. For reasons unexplained he captured and duct taped four other people and was storing them in an abandoned part of the farm. Why? This doesn't make a bit of sense. Aside from the two kills at the beginning, the other three were lackluster with little description or suspense. Which was disappointing enough on it's own, but for me body count and creativity make or break a slasher. To spend most of the book building up the body count fodder - a good third of which was doing their makeup and standing in line to get into the haunted woods/farm/cabin place - and almost no time on the kills almost unforgivable. Not to mention that most of the body count fodder LIVES?! Super disappointing.

One other relatively minor thing bothered me. At first it was just the size of the corn maze. Sixty acres is massive. Growing up on ten acres, a sixty acre corn maze just seemed unfathomable. However, I did my research, and while mazes that size are rare, they do exist and would be a major attraction. What continued to bother me, however, is when the maze is described as "Thirty acres at its widest point." Did George Lucas write this? "I once did the corn maze run in 30 acres!" Personally, I've never seen 'acre' used to describe 'width'. An acre us a unit of area, not distance.

One last, last thing about the corn maze. Supposedly, it's the most boring aspect of "The Thicket". Then why do we spend so much time there? Yes, I understand it was so the girls could hide and make out with the group of boys they just met ten minutes earlier... However, if there are other more interesting things to do, it would have been nice to visit those areas. Instead, we mostly waited in lines, and got lost in the corn maze.

I'm ready to move onto the next book, so I'll summarize my thoughts with a quote from one of the main characters:

"Thank god. I'm so bored of lines." - Maren (the girl who didn't live)

You didn't miss much, Maren. The ending wasn't that great.