A Video review can be found on my Youtube
Boys in the Valley

I do not often delve into horror especially adult horror, I love middle grade horror, there's something that's just so amazing about it and I know what it is for me and it has to do with the fact that it focuses more on creating a scary entity and focusing on the plot of the
story and there isn't a bunch of gratuitous sex and an overabundance of gore. Now when I delve into adult horror I'm very very picky about it but this was one that the minute I heard what it was compared to I was like I want to read that. The book is comped as The Exorcist meets Lord of the Flies. Now one of my favorite Classics of all time is Lord of the Flies. I'm sorry I enjoyed that one. I know it's not a lot of other people's favorites but I personally enjoyed it when I read it back in high school. The whole idea of a bunch of boys living on an island together that end up turning on each other and killing each other left me like ‘this is good stuff’.

So that's essentially what this is only instead of it taking place on an island these boys are up in a remote area. They are orphans and they live at the orphanage of Saint Vincent's church and one night a man shows up and next thing they know all the boys are turning on each other they're killing one another and all these horrible moments start to happen.

Trigger Warnings the story does involve brutal descriptive death of children and from what I was able to gather the ages range from 5 to 16. I feel like that should be a given considering the synopsis tells you they start killing each other but I know not everyone reads synopsis (Hi i am said person haha) The other trigger warning that I would like to give is there is animal death, that one is not in the synopsis and it did kind of throw me a little bit, but not enough to make me stop.

Boys in the Valley starts out really strong with a prologue where you're like “oh, oh, oh my God”
there is no holding back. After that it kind of slows down a little bit and then it starts to slowly build back up. I think that was one of the elements that I really enjoyed about this most, how the story just kept building and the anticipation for what was going to happen next kept growing. It really helped that this worked off of short chapters because you would fly through them so quickly and have that burning desire to keep going. I would take breaks but then find myself itching to continue and found myself picking it back up.

The story is split into multiple parts and each part gets more explosive than the last one. I actually really kind of liked that because you would finish a part and then the next part you'd be like “oh my Gosh” because the stakes would kick up and I was left shocked and it wasn't like a slow build up for each part it was like “boom here's the next moment” and I was left sitting there like “oh my gosh” .

Now there is a lot of religious elements throughout this because like I said the
boys live in an orphanage that is on the grounds of the Christian church of Saint Vincent's.
A lot of the religious elements do show both sides of good and bad within the church. There is the head Father who clearly has a need for control, he so desperately has this need to control the boys and he weaponizes God to control them. He does very horrible heinous things to them such as locking them in a hole in the ground outside in freezing winter, beating their hands numerous times with a stick, starving them essentially and so much more. But then you have the other father who doesn't agree with the things that the head father is doing but because he's a lower rank he can't really do anything about it. So we see the struggle between these two fathers, one wants to protect the children and the other who wants to control them. I really appreciated this set up because it's realistic and helped add more depth to the plot.

There is a 3rd adult (in total 4 but the 4th doesn't really have much of a role) the third one who we do spend a lot of time with is there on punishment for a crime he committed. What I liked about this character was how we got to see him flip back and forth with the care of the children. Sometimes he was in agreement with the head father and was all too happy to deal out punishment, other times not so much because he understood that they are kids. It was interesting seeing his internal battle as the story progressed.

We get to meet a majority of the boys, it does follow a particular small little group of them but I did feel like there was enough exploration into all of them to really get a good feel of how many boys were in this orphanage since there are about 30 of them. I also feel there was enough exploration into how these boys functioned as a group to understand the fall when the later half of the story comes into play. Most of the kids follow the oldest and the story does focus a lot on the oldest since he has been living there the longest, so he is very much the ‘older brother’ figure in the book.

When the horror aspect comes into play it is kind of instant, and it's very obvious when the moment hits and it's meant to be obvious to the reader but the characters have no clue it happens. When the possession was released that was when all hell pretty much breaks loose in this story and when the stakes really started to climb. The action picked up and was so intense, you could not predict what would happen next. The children start rebelling, alliances are being made, attacks are happening, deaths are popping up and at the center is one particular little boy. It was insane, intense and so unbelievably captivating. Fracassi uses mob mentality really well in this story, and it made so much sense for it to be used considering the condition that a lot of these boys were in. There were definitely moments where I was like “umm rabid child climbing the wall needs to be addressed” but mostly the mob mentality played a larger role in the chaos.

I do have to say the ending was so bittersweet and took me a bit by surprise, but ultimately I do think it was fitting. And yes it did make me cry, because you watch these boys struggle and
struggle and struggle and just try and do the right thing and try and get out of this horrible situation and then it ends you’re just like ”oh”. Because it's one of those endings where on one hand you're happy and on the other hand you're like “well, okay I see”, and it just it hurts

Definitely for me this was five stars all the way through, it was compelling and addictive and now I have to buy a copy as I can see myself re-reading this one.