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Stalk
It was obvious the minute they set foot in Rancho, Oklahoma. They couldn't see it. They couldn't feel it. But something evil was stalking Kate and Jenny. Kate was 16. Jenny was 8. All Jenny wanted was a friend. It seemed so simple back then. Just after their mother died Kate vowed to protect Jenny with her life. She's given the chance to do just that in Allen Rubens' new thriller, Stalk. Stalk is an unforgettable journey into a 100 year old Native American Nightmare where evil is the hunter that won't stop hunting. But in this nightmare no one sleeps. Everything is real. Sometimes it's better not to wake up. Pray for Jenny.
214 pages, Hardcover
First published March 15, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
July 28, 2026
I do not say this lightly stalk genuinely unsettled me in a way that most horror fiction fails to. I finished it two nights ago and i am still thinking about jenny.
What rubens does that is so effective is that he earns the horror by grounding everything in grief first. Kate and jenny did not choose to come to rancho oklahoma. they came because their mother vanessa died and their father troy thought a small town and a fresh start might give them something new york no longer could. that context matters enormously because it means these two girls are already broken before anything supernatural touches them. kate at sixteen has already become a second mother to jenny at eight. she has already given up the normal parts of being a teenager to make sure jenny is okay. and then rancho happens.
The evil in this book is the slow creeping kind. you cannot see it. You cannot feel it when you first arrive. that invisible quality is written with real skill rubens knows that the most effective horror builds before it shows itself and the way the dread accumulates in those early chapters is masterfully paced.
The hundred year old native american nightmare at the root of it all gives the horror real historical and cultural weight. this is not a generic haunting. It is something specific and ancient and connected to this particular land and that specificity makes it feel genuinely threatening in a way that invented monsters rarely do.
Jenny wanting nothing more than a friend is the detail that destroys you because it is so pure and so simple and so completely vulnerable to what is coming.
Knowing that rubens spent forty years as an award winning copywriter a man who understands exactly how words create atmosphere and feeling explains why this book gets under your skin so efficiently. he knows how to make you feel something without over-explaining it.
Genuinely creepy, genuinely affecting and completely worth your time if you have the nerve for it.
What rubens does that is so effective is that he earns the horror by grounding everything in grief first. Kate and jenny did not choose to come to rancho oklahoma. they came because their mother vanessa died and their father troy thought a small town and a fresh start might give them something new york no longer could. that context matters enormously because it means these two girls are already broken before anything supernatural touches them. kate at sixteen has already become a second mother to jenny at eight. she has already given up the normal parts of being a teenager to make sure jenny is okay. and then rancho happens.
The evil in this book is the slow creeping kind. you cannot see it. You cannot feel it when you first arrive. that invisible quality is written with real skill rubens knows that the most effective horror builds before it shows itself and the way the dread accumulates in those early chapters is masterfully paced.
The hundred year old native american nightmare at the root of it all gives the horror real historical and cultural weight. this is not a generic haunting. It is something specific and ancient and connected to this particular land and that specificity makes it feel genuinely threatening in a way that invented monsters rarely do.
Jenny wanting nothing more than a friend is the detail that destroys you because it is so pure and so simple and so completely vulnerable to what is coming.
Knowing that rubens spent forty years as an award winning copywriter a man who understands exactly how words create atmosphere and feeling explains why this book gets under your skin so efficiently. he knows how to make you feel something without over-explaining it.
Genuinely creepy, genuinely affecting and completely worth your time if you have the nerve for it.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review