Genre: Horror

NOS4A2 is a Horror novel by Joe Hill. The cover is a license plate spelling out the title that appears to have blood or rust at the top of the plate.

The story spans three decades and is principally about Vic McQueen fighting the self style vampire Charlie Manx. Manx’s car a 1938 Rolls Royce Wrath is the actual vampire. Vic gets away from Manx and he goes to prison. Manx dies when someone takes the engine out of the Wrath and comes back to life when the engine is restored. So the Wrath is actually a phylactery which means Manx is actually a litch… Should have put that on the effing license plate. Manx takes Vic’s son and the car slowly drains him of his health and feeds it into Manx (See Litch stuff, not Vampire).

I only read one or two horror novels a year, usually around October. This is a popular novel and from the title, I thought it was a vampire novel. I probably would have enjoyed it more if it were L17CH instead of NOS4A2. I am disgruntled because there is no fangs or drinking of blood. The first half of the book is incredibly slow. I kept getting bored and turning it to the radio or podcasts instead of listening and it took me almost a month to slog through the book. At 20 hours in audio book form, that is a lot of slogging. It picks up for the 2nd half of the book and I got into more, but still I do not recommend this book.

I give this 3 out of 5 stars. It has some interesting visuals and I really like how Joe ties the end and the beginning together. The narrator is great and really adds to the story.