Books I've Read: Black River Orchard

 

So...  This was a creepy one.  I honestly don't think I'll look the same way at apples ever again.

First up, I'm a big fan of Chuck Wendig, the dude.  He writes awesome blog posts, is super fun on social media and gives great advice to writers.  I'm relatively new to him as an actual author, mainly because he writes horror and horror isn't my automatic go-to genre.  I usually enjoy it when I read it, but I don't usually seek it out.

Anyway...  This book follows a whole bunch of characters in a small Pennsylvania town where a new variety of apple is making some significant waves in the community.  There's the newly arrived lesbian couple who are struggling to overcome problems in their marriage, an poor orchard owner who has just managed to get his land back and is determined to make a success of it, his daughter, a wannabe influencer who is desperate to get out of town for college, with her boyfriend, the school's star runner.  And there's the couple whose rental property is a haven for those interested in exploring the boundaries of their sex lives and an older gentleman who has spent many years searching for rare and interesting varieties of apples.

Alongside these people are a creepy cabal of powermongers who keep the town running and whose rituals border bacchanalia.

When the orchard owner starts selling a new varietal of apple, the whole town changes and the only ones who can see the darkness descending on the population are the few who don't - for a variety of reasons - eat the apple.

I found this book quite creepy and  I usually don't find horror books that disturbing.  Apples are such an innocuous thing, a sweet, delicious, healthy treat.  Giving something like that these sinister properties and dark powers gave me genuine chills.  Like I said, I'm probably never going to look at apples quite the same way.  A lot of what happens in the book is deeply ridiculous, yet it still left me unsettled.

I guess it worked...  And as a bonus, I learned an awful lot about apples and how they grow, are bred and how many different varieties there are that we never get to see.

So I'd recommend this one if you are looking for a book that will make you deeply uneasy.  And perhaps even make you quicken your step as you walk through the fruit and vegetable section of your local supermarket.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb: 

A small town is transformed by dark magic when a strange tree begins bearing magical apples in this new masterpiece of horror from the bestselling author of Wanderers and The Book of Accidents.

It’s autumn in the town of Harrow, but something else is changing in the town besides the season.

Because in that town there is an orchard, and in that orchard, seven most unusual trees. And from those trees grows a new sort of apple: Strange, beautiful, with skin so red it’s nearly black.

Take a bite of one of these apples and you will desire only to devour another. And another. You will become stronger. More vital. More yourself, you will believe. But then your appetite for the apples and their peculiar gifts will keep growing—and become darker.

This is what happens when the townsfolk discover the secret of the orchard. Soon it seems that everyone is consumed by an obsession with the magic of the apples… and what’s the harm, if it is making them all happier, more confident, more powerful?

And even if buried in the orchard is something else besides the seeds of this extraordinary tree: a bloody history whose roots reach back the very origins of the town.

But now the leaves are falling. The days grow darker. And a stranger has come to town, a stranger who knows Harrow’s secrets. Because it’s harvest time, and the town will soon reap what it has sown.