Cannibal Jack

by Patricia Lee Macomber

Barbara Connolly thought she was giving her daughters a better life when she left her abusive ex-husband and moved back to her home town. But Rapture, Pennsylvania, just wasn't the same anymore. There have been two murders right on her street, in the same house her brother disappeared in over twenty years before. Bodies are turning up everywhere, all missing flesh and with the same ragged teeth marks on the bones. Teenage girls are disappearing.

And something—or someone—is crawling around inside Barbara's walls.

As the police race to find the killer, Barbara fights to keep her daughters from becoming its next victim.

288 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 6, 2024

Reviews

[mothy · Rating 1 out of 5]

What an awful read. Enticed by the first chapter, I can’t believe I saw this through. Characters were vapid at best and forgotten about at worst. Grammatical errors hurt the immersion for the entire book. While the colorful descriptions were nice to read, it did not take away from the absolute train wreck this was. There are so many taboos, like incest and inbreeding, and what could’ve been a great gothic horror was cheapened by stupid punchlines and lack of characterization. The main character, Barbara, goes through domestic violence at the hands of her husband, and he didn’t stop with her. There are mentions of abuse inflicted on her eldest daughter, Shannon, but these overall do not paint a picture that I think the author was trying to. They’re glimpses into parts of their character that are never explored. Mark, another main character, is supposed to be haunted by the memory of his “dead” friend Dewey that you meet in Chapter 1. The friend group responsible for this “death” is flippant and even able to crack jokes about it. Their characters fall completely flat and seem to almost lack empathy for this friend. Mark becomes a martyr for no reason, and Barbara’s character betrays herself by the end. The epilogue was disappointing, the twists were obvious and didn’t land how they were intended to, and overall I feel I only finished this book because of sunk-cost. I am so disappointed in this story and was hoping against hope it would get better. Instead of feeling immersed in the world, I know the soda orders of Barbara and her daughters. You barely even remember she has two.

[AMY MATTALIANO · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! I'm always down to read gory books involving taboo subjects. And they seem to be hard to find. This one did not disappoint, inbreeding, incest, cannibalism. How do you get more taboo than a combination like that? These elements take the usual concept of a quaint small town with a dark secret and turn it on its ear in a major way. If you're looking for a story with horror, twists, turns, and possibly some revenge, look no further. This fast-paced book will have you asking yourself, "Did that really just happen?" And the answer is always going to be, "Damn right, it did."
So why did I give this book 4 stars instead of 5? There were a couple of things that took me out of the story: 1. Early on, one character is mis-named, which made that passage difficult to follow; 2. How the character Jack ended up as he did was unclear. I felt a little lost even rereading it; 3. 2 characters who disappear get no closure. They're simply forgotten.

[David Wilson]

Full disclosure - I also edited and publ

[Cathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

,Terrifying, engaging, funny, sad,
Satisfying
Could be a movie!