The Faithful by Matt Hayward REVIEWED

Alright. Here it is. The last book I'm reading of 2018. There's a few others I wanted to get to before the year was through, but that didn't work out...clearly, since it's almost February 2019.

I really just want to get my "best of list" done and move on, frankly. I want to get back to reading stuff from 1988.

And, as such, my best-of will be ready soon.

Now, I'm not sure if I am just burnt out on "modern horror" but, The Faithful, unfortunately, will not be making that list for me.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the book. In fact, I absolutely looked forward to The Faithful. So much so that I requested a review copy. I loved Matt Hayward's debut novel, What Do Monsters Fear and his collaboration with Patrick Lacey, which I recently reviewed, Practitioners. Sinister Grin Press is dependable for quality. The birds were in row for me to love it.

It's well written, it's dialogue is reasonable, characters are well developed and the story moves smoothly.

So what is it?

Nothing is wrong with this book! It's not you, it's me!

It's simply not my kinda thing. The characters didn't engage me, too much lore that didn't tickle my fancy, just the type of story it was. Cosmic, culty horror isn't my thing. And that's really it.

Just a matter of preference.

Hayward can write very well and has demonstrated this previously. There's great monster moments, Leo is a fun and different protagonist and for a while, I enjoyed the "on the road" concept.

However, The Faithful became a bit tangential at about the halfway mark, introducing all the back story and that's where I was lost.

I am by no means deterring you from giving this a spin, just telling you it didn't spin it for me.

That being said, The Faithful has an aging comedian, Leo Cartwright, as it's front-and-center, nearing retirement. On the eve of his last gig, he is met by a young man in a wheelchair with bizzare story of a mysterious man haunting his dreams.

Soon, that man ends up dead and Leo is having bad dreams himself. This leads him on a quest to finding a No-man's-land, with a rag-tag bunch of characters along for the ride, monsters bursting from bellies and all sorts of nasty transformations.

In hindsight, I'm not sure if I'm burnt out or what, because that sounds like as rad of a synopsis as any.

My final takeaway from The Faithful is that it's middle of the road and I'm not quite sure why it didn't do it for me, it simply didn't. Now onto 2019!

2.5/5