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Synopsis:
When three friends lose their way in a serial killer’s old hunting ground, they must fight to survive the threat in the woods—and each other—in this spiky, heart-pounding slasher.
Never turn your back on a friend.
Jade, Stef, and Zoe are hiking Washington’s Bones Hollow Trail, braving cougars, black bears, and the storms that roll in without warning. The friends’ paranoia isn’t helped by listening to a true crime podcast about the serial killer who once roamed this same forest.
Then when Stef twists her ankle—badly—there’s no one to hear them scream for help. The only sign of life for miles is a cabin that looks to be straight out of a horror movie, with a man who’s all too eager to invite them in.
As things take a chilling turn, the friends must find a way to stay alive together. After all, who can you trust when your back’s against the wall? But unfortunately for them, the only thing more twisted than this nightmare is their friendship . . .
Review:
I have been reading so many good books lately that it is expected that some will not live up to the quality of some of the other books still fresh in my mind. When I started reading Backstabbers, the debut horror novel by Eliza Jabore, I knew this was going to be the case. I was still going to do my best to make sure that reading a handful of books being released within the first two weeks of June did not make me start to compare them to one another. Unfortunately I could not get over the many irritating aspects of Backstabbers that makes this a novel I could not finish fast enough.
The story is about three friends, Jade, Stef, and Zoe. Jade is the first person narrator on the annual vacation the three friends take. These vacations are Zoe’s idea, basically her planning to get them into precarious situations and using her intuition to luck their way out of it. This year’s adventure is hiking in the Bone Hollow Trail, where the Bone Hollow Hunter has been killing single women in the woods, but they are safe because “there are three of them.” The Bone Hollow Hunter has also been capture according to the official story, but the podcasts and online forums are convinced this is an innocent man.This adventure is led by Zoe’s love for true crime podcasts and ambition to be a podcast star. Her driving motivation to have her own true crime podcast, and Backstabbers becomes yet another novel with a true crime podcast at the center. Backstabbers leans so heavily into it’s true crime podcast to move the plot forward that it turns into a horrible use of the trope, almost as horrible and ridiculous as the characters.
There has been an online debate about a woman walking through the woods and if they would rather meet a random man or a bear. Most women choose the bear because the dangers that the man imposes are much more unpredictable than a bears. In this case, the women in the woods are looking for the random man. When they meet him, they are the ones who are unpredictable, escalate the situation, go through the man’s belongings, try to distract him to explore the cabin where he is staying, taking pictures of things that lead them to be convinced that he is the killer they specifically came into the woods to find. Zoe wants the first guy they meet to be the Bone Hollow Hunter, even if another man has already been arrested for it, and she will not be convinced otherwise. In this case, the guy that the three women find is minding his own business until they knock on his door. These women want to catch a serial killer as their fun vacation. Around them, it is safer to be the bear than the random man.
This feeling is the biggest flaw of the entire novel. The justification these women feel in their adventure, in going into the woods without a second thought about how dangerous and stupid they are being, to hunt a serial killer. Zoe wants nothing except to get evidence to start her own podcast. She also has a stupid idea about how famous she is going to get from this story and how much money she will make from this podcast. Hypothetically, if she does catch the Bone Hollow Hunter, it is also just one story. To make a podcast, there will have to be continuous content. This short-sighted thinking is how Zoe lives her life, and she does not care about how much danger she puts herself and her friends in to get what she wants. This main character behavior is one that could be understood in teenagers, but these women are grown adults, close to thirty. However, not a single one of them has anything in their lives valuable enough to keep them out of trouble. None of them are motivated to stay alive by a partner or children or family or even other friends. The only real motivation is survival and fame.
I read this novel with the same interest as watching some old slasher movies, with a detachment from all of the characters and kind of rooting for the killer. We get no sense that any of these characters would be missed by anyone if they do not get through this situation. The narrator, Jade, seems to be the closest to the reader wanting someone to survive because she is not as insufferable as all of the other characters, but she is also dumb for continuing to be friends with Zoe and Stef. She tells many of the other stories she recounts from other vacations that the three took together, and it makes no sense why a grown woman would still be friends with them unless she likes the danger. This is not the first time that her life she has been put into terrible situations by her friends, but she continues to entertain them. In the end, this is the kind of horror story where some characters deserve what the get and other characters deserve worse
I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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