Suicide Forest (World's Scariest Places)

I think the first word that comes to mind is disappointment. The second would be stupidity. I was very excited for this book (although when I heard it was a Goodreads choice award I became concerned because Goodreads is so inaccurate and awards the worst novels) and it did start off well setting the scene and the characters. Your typical foreigners making stupid decisions and getting themselves in the worst possible situation. Although most of these characters had lived in Japan for YEARS and one of them was a Japanese citizen born and raised, so why they were so stupid throughout this entire novel I really don’t know. Also you teach English in Japan for like 5 years and you STILL don’t speak the language??? Ok. It initially felt like a fun horror novel set in a real haunted location, Aokigahara Julia, that had a good mesh of characters and insight into the culture. As the novel progressed the main character became more and more insufferable the female characters all became just maidens to be protected and saved by him. My third word to describe this novel is Misogyny! The way the women were portrayed in this was terrible, and the way the men talked and thought about the women? Also terrible. Which leads me to the next issue with this book. It’s set in a notoriously haunted location, supernatural is a key element but the antagonists in this book are not ghosts! This man wrote an entire book on one of the most darkly intriguing forests in the world and did not make the horror supernatural. There are no supernatural happenings, no ghosts, no hauntings, and instead we just get another novel about humans being terrible. I felt this book missed a huge opportunity to be a fun spooky supernatural horror and instead made a last minute twist into complete and utter mediocrity. I don’t want to spoil the twist but it sucks. Another thing I also did not expect in a novel about a haunted forest is rape!! Bates, like every other mediocre male horror author, uses rape as a horror device, not to do anything worthwhile or explore the trauma or emotional toll this inflicts on a woman, no no, the rape is so the male protagonist can feel bad about what might happen to his female companions and go into a “blood rage” so he can beat up the baddies. One scene a female companion is rescued and immediately shouts “he raped me” to which our protagonist responds “stop Nina we have to save Mel”. And then he moves on, and us as readers just move on too because rape means nothing to men. It’s an inconvenience sure, some touched his girl, and it’s wrong but that’s it let’s move on. Finally the ending to this book was horrible. It makes no sense, it was too easy, and this entire novel was like a trainwreck. Would I recommend this novel? Absolutely not. Did it deserve a ln award? Absolutely not, but again Goodreads is the most inaccurate reading app I’ve seen and I happily won’t use it! Was this a good book? No! Another missed opportunity filled with toxic masculinity, misogyny, rape as novelty, and no fucking ghosts.

Jeremy Bates does it again. You think this story is going to go one way and then a twist you couldn’t even imagine pops out of no where and throws you through a loop. Great character development and writing.

Nina mvp