Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Published April 26, 2016
Tom Doherty Associates
ISBN: 0765378809 (ISBN13: 9780765378804)
Black Spring has been haunted for generations by the Black Rock Witch. When she appears, she has a physical presence, and everyone can see her. The town created an organization long ago to deal with hiding her and keeping the town curse quarantined. Now, with technology being so advanced, they have a lot of new ways to track her presence–but just as many ways their secret could be exposed. The last time a government agency tried to experiment on the apparition, townspeople died. They have to keep her secret at all costs.
HEX begins in a quirky tone–the town treats her like a simple, if annoying, fact of life. When the Witch appears, they do some absurd things to run interference with outsiders; they cover her on the street with utility construction tents, parade floats, tool sheds. Then, a group of the town’s teenagers begin to get sick of the secrecy. They conduct their own experiments to prove her existence, filming results to later post on the internet once they have concrete proof. Once of the teens is a psychopath who takes things too far, turning the experiments into an outlet for his frustration, harassing the Witch until things begin to nightmarishly spin out of control.
HEX is a creepy book that slowly ratchets up the horror until the reader is well and truly spooked. It takes one or two absurdities and keeps meandering until everything goes far off the rails, spiraling out of control.
JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.