The Green Eyed Monster - Book Review

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John Becker and Martin Smith were born on the same day and grew up side by side in the same small town. Both writing prodigies, as adults they both became highly successful authors. Their work was eerily similar, and their rivalry was fierce, culminating in the Becker's sudden, violent death in Smith's home. Smith claims it was self-defence, but as the police investigate strange details begin to emerge that suggest a more supernatural explanation.

Green Eyed Monster is the first book in the Enigma of Twilight Falls trilogy, about a mysterious town in Northern California which draws in artists of all types. Unusually, the three novels can be read in any order, and each gives a piece of the puzzle that is this strange town.

I choose to read this book because I fancied something a little scary to read in the lead up to Halloween, and it does deliver on that score. It is very creepy in places. The description of the two authors' homes, each living in their own otherwise empty apartment complex full of empty apartments that each suggest absent inhabitants, gave me chills. Early on in the book it reminded me a little of Max Barry's Lexicon (in which poets are able to magically control people through the power of language), and Chuck Palahniuck's Lullabye (which features a culling song, an ancient African spell for euthanasing the sick), but it ended up going in a different direction from what I expected.

I suppose being a horror novel is an automatic trigger warning, but more specifically readers might like a heads up that this book contains violence, rape, and the death of a child. Also evil butterflies, which was odd.

The Green Eyed Monster is a hard to categorise slip-stream novel. Don't read it if you're looking for something with a neat, satisfying ending, but if you want to be equal parts disturbed and puzzled, then this book is for you.

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Disclaimer: **I received a complimentary copy of this book from Curiosity Quills Press, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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