Creepy Book Club discussion

Please leave your thoughts on the end of the book (starting from Chapter 49) and the book as a whole!

First, I might come across as if I didn't give the book a real chance, because once I started disliking it, I started engaging with it as a "hate-read", but I want to make this clear: I only started actively disliking it after about 10-15 chapters, and once Part 2 started, I honestly believed I was going to enjoy Part 2 so much that it would retroactively make me have fonder memories of Part 1, even though it could never fully wash the taste of Luke's extreme fatphobia off my mouth.

Oof... okay...

Let me start by saying that I am tired of writers using imagery of smaller religions for spooky content while upholding Christianity as a "good religion." It's a small thing in the universe of the mess that is The Ritual, but when Luke "started praying for the first time since he was a kid," my eyes rolled so hard I'm surprised they didn't fall off my face.

I mentioned this in my comments about the beginning of the book: I was confident that we weren't supposed to like Luke, given that he's characterized as such an awful (and fatphobic) friend. I also expected Hutch to be revealed to be evil, since he was so comically incompetent, but... I guess I was wrong. It really seems like Luke was just meant to be a relatively likeable anti-hero(?) and Hutch's incompetence was just that... incompetence.

But okay. Part 1 was bad, but once Part 2 kicks in and Luke is brought into a creepy house, things might actually get interesting. Especially when he first awakes and sees the teenagers wearing the animal masks. They seem very cool! It seems like I finally have someone to root for!

Oh, what is this? They're throwing homophobic slurs every other sentence? And they're implying that immigration is the dead of their country? Their characterizations are almost non-existent beyond that, they seem more like parodies of horror villains than actual characters.

Well... I guess we're back to Zero-Tension state because I continue to not care if any of these people live or die.

And here comes Loki, the coolest of the Bad Guys, literally telling us that Luke is special. I'm sorry... What? Has Loki ever... met... a person? Because I don't think I know anyone as un-special as Luke.

If you had any doubts on whether you're meant to be rooting for Luke or not, he will tells us again and again that his friends mattered to him. You know... His friends he'd mostly lost touch with 10 years ago, and who he constantly mocked for having asthma and being fat (have I mentioned fatphobia in this review? because I promise I haven't brought it up even a fraction of how much it actually happens in the book.)

Don't worry, though. It gets worse. There's a teenage girl character, and the two things we learn about her are... 1. She's fat (surprise), and... 2... Er... her vagina smells bad...?

Who allowed this?

Why?

Then to top it all off... Luke survives!? After pages and pages and chapters and chapters and aeons of having to endure his fatphobia, his misogyny, his fatphobia, his ableism, his fatphobia, and his utter inability to be a decent friend... Not only did he survive, but... He also didn't learn any lessons on how to be a better person!? His final lesson wasn't "Oh, maybe I should be a better friend!" it was "I should cease the day, because any moment could be my last"?! What!?

Okay. Let me take a breath.

I love bad media. I really do. That's why I hate-read stuff. I enjoy the experience of it. And The Ritual was great as that. It was painful and awful, but I still devoured the last 120 pages in one sitting. It hits the sweet-spot of books that fail in every conceivable way except for pacing.

That being said, I honestly consider this book almost dangerous in some ways. A narrative where a character as misogynist, as fatphobic, as ableist as Luke not only ends the book not having learned why the way he interacts with other people is not okay, but also gets rewarded with a cool action-hero ending, tells us that these character flaws are actually not that big of a deal, especially when the story is so basic and straightforward as this. There are ways to create stories with villainous awful main characters that don't learn from their mistakes, but they really need to be smarter than this, and at least attempt to give the other characters some amount of personality.

This, though... This is just a disaster.

I look forward to seeing if my opinion is unpopular or not (I tend to have unpopular opinions)....but I actually really enjoyed this book. Found it atmospheric and fun.

I do agree that it gets tiresome seeing pagan religions and witchcraft being evil (as a polytheist and practitioner, myself, especially) but if the "bad guys" were practicing ancient Norse religious beliefs...well....that did include a lot of sacrifice, including human sacrifice. Would still love to see some horror someday where the witches or pagans are the "good guys" though, if anyone has suggestions.

Yeah, I gotta agree that the fatphobia was rampant in this. As a big lady, I was especially angered by the female teen being constantly and solely described by how fat she was.
I was into the story in the first part. I liked the mystery of what was stalking them in the woods and the tension between the characters.
I got excited with the pagan/witchy/black metal aspects in the second part, but I feelnlole that part was A LOT of talking and inner dialogue and not much else until the very end. Even listening at 3x speed, I felt like the last part of the book took too long.
And all of that happened so Luke could finally be free?!? That's what he was so happy about at the end? I was hoping for a simple, newfound appreciation for his life and some guilt over how he treated his friends. But he's happy he's free. . . okkaaaayyyyy?
Not my favorite, liked the first half for the most part. I think the movie made a more compelling story character-wise, though (It's on Netflix for anyone who hasn't seen it).
2/5

Apparently you can't edit your posts on the phone app? LOL I meant *but I FEEL LIKE that part. . .

The characters were very unlikable, but that didn't bother me too much. I just appreciated that plenty of time was spent on character development. I had a real sense of who these people were. They had a lot going on in their lives as well as inside of themselves. They seemed like real and whole people. Which made what was happening to them so much scarier. There were a couple really chilling scenes in the book. The ending was dragged out to long, but ultimately I liked the resolution of the story. I really liked this one overall.

I do agree, once you got to know the characters, you felt bad for them (well, some of them, in my case LOL). It's just a personal preference for me when it comes to jumping right in to the action. I prefer a little more of an intro. The scary scenes were definitely intense, though, I will give you that. The description of the animal heads the teens were wearing was one of my favorites!

I really loved the animal heads the teens were wearing as well! That whole chapter was probably my favorite moment in the book.

I thought that Luke, Hutch, Phil, and Dom definitely seemed quite real, but I think the teens and the old lady in the second part were very by-the-numbers villains and I didn't believe them as people at all... :/

ok so. This book has genuinely annoyed me by wasting its potential. I throughly enjoyed the atmosphere of the first part, I loved the idea of something stalking them, but just out of view.

The second part was such a boring read. Infact the only reason I didn't DNF it was the hope for a really cool ending (which I found eh). The descriptions of the teens were ridiculous and I got sick very quickly of the girls descriptions. The whole heavy metal = satanic cult rubbish was just annoying.

If he had come across an ancient society still living in the woods, who sacrificed to the woodland creature or whatever, I would have enjoyed it much more I think. I just couldn't get myself to believe a random band made it through the forest and happened to find a lady who could call the creature.

Long story short. I preferred the film in this instance.

I completely agree with you Tali! I had the feeling the last chapters were just Luke ranting about how he disliked black metal, people wearing make up, and girls that aren’t as thin as he would like them to be. I didn’t get how the band would know about the old lady and all this stuff.

And I thought the last pages (or in my case the last minutes of the audiobook) to be anticlimactic as hell. The big monster is there for what, 2 seconds? I LOVE creatures who are part goat or stag, I would have loved to hear more about it.

When we are first introduced to the teenagers I thought: Creepy kids wearing animal heads? SIGN ME IN! But then there was no pagan society living in the woods, no cult or developed folklore... I was expecting something more like the movie, which was way better in my opinion as well. Not disappointed to have read it, but would not specially recommend it!

I think the movie took the better parts of the book and ran with that. I felt like the book was the rough draft and the movie was the final LOL

Disclaimer: I really did not like the movie.

I will have to revisit after reading this.

I found the tension in the first part really good. I found it hard to believe that at no point Hutch didn't tell Phil and Dom that he'd pushed the short cut as he didn't think they would have made their originally planned trek. I felt anxious for most of the first part of the book... and then the teens came. The masks were creepy. The rest was really boring, and completely wiped out anything I enjoyed in the first part of the book.

For someone with a head injury it would have been nice to see more unravelling of his thoughts/mind. Instead his inner dialogue seemed to get more articulate.

I did like the little old hooved lady.