Murder of Crows discussion

Those You Killed by Christopher Badcock

Summary:
Elwood Cathis gave up everything for the needle. Desperate to rebuild a relationship with his daughter and ex-wife, he’s come to Lake Chance, a once bustling vacation hot spot, now caught in the throes of a prolonged demise. Tainted and scarred by past events, it's a place that echoes his own existence.
Echoes…
Something echoes. It calls out, like a forgotten broadcast stuck on repeat. Something in the forests. Something infernal that only he and others like him can hear; the lost, the weak, the tormented.
Suffering with intense withdrawal and plagued by nightmarish visions, Elwood will confront the lake’s dark past, and in doing so, uncover parts of himself that he lost at the tip of a needle, and so much more.

My thoughts:
In the book you spend a lot of time in the main character's head. It was an internal struggle with himself and what my English teacher would call a “character vs. self” instance. I typically like books like these. For instance, I was a huge fan of Touching Spirit Bear, but this book seems very slow and uneventful. It reminds me of a slow building movie that my parents would watch. Not a bad thing, I enjoy the movies they watched, just an observation on the ambience of the book.

I was expecting for the pace to pick up at some point, but the further I got in, the more I started thinking that it was probably going to be calm up until the last 20 pages or so. I was kind of right it was the last 150 pages or so. I feel like the book could've been so much better if the ending would’ve been slightly longer and the beginning of the book (view spoiler)[(when the main character was going through his withdrawals) (hide spoiler)] would’ve been cut down.

The plot of (view spoiler)[the “demon” was such an interesting and cool idea that it should’ve been the main focus of the book. It was something I wasn’t expecting mostly because the impression that I got of this book was that it was a super gory and murderous book. I’m not upset that this was the case, but I wish the gore was picked up a notch. (hide spoiler)]