The Sacrifice Box

Martin Stewart. Penguin Random House Children’s UK. (400p) ISBN 9780141371610

The Sacrifice Box

I’ve had The Sacrifice Box moving up my TBR pile over the last month or so, but it was immediately catapulted to the top on the advice of a fellow twitter user and I really didn’t regret pushing it up the list.

I usually hate comparisons, but this book read like UK Stephen King (when he’s at his best), mixed with a feeling of Stranger Things if they were Five Abroad in Dorset.

The main characters; Sep, Arkle, Mack, Lamb and Hadley were friends for a summer and during that summer they found a box in the woods, so far so strange. Sep had the words for the rules of the box fill his head from out of the blue and the five of them sacrifice items to the box and speak the rules.

Four years later someone breaks the rules.

The characters are well-defined with their own idiosyncrasies and personalities, the pace is blistering at times but never falters. Incidental characters are there for a reason, sometimes a gory one, but a definite reason.

If you like creepy horror with a bit of blood, you really can’t go wrong with this book from Martin Stewart.