Review: Children of the Dark

Children of the Dark by Jonathan Janz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Children of the Dark by Jonathan Janz is a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ action-packed, horror/thriller tale set in the small town of Shadeland where high-school student Will Burgess and his friends find themselves the targets of the town bullies, an escaped serial killer and a whispered ancient evil that may be more than just a legend.

The week I saw seventeen people die didn’t begin with carnage, monsters, or a sadistic serial killer. It all began with a baseball game.
-- Jonathan Janz, Children of the Dark

This is a fast-paced and riveting tale, with unexpected surprises and twists. Janz delivers realistic characters that I loved, and several that I loved to despise! He provides a realistic portrait of small town life, with all of its close friendships, small triumphs, unacknowledged prejudices and uncomfortable secrets, and adds multiple doses of violence and horrific, awakened evil.

Raised by his single, drug-addicted mother, Will does his best to care for his little sister Peach, do well in school and earn a place on the baseball team. Life is difficult, at best, and during this first week in June he also has to find a way to survive the horrors, both human and otherwise, that have their sights set on Shadeland. All this while dealing with the realization that the girl of his dreams, currently dating one of the town's worst bullies, might actually like him, too.

Janz's story reminded me in many ways of Stephen King's coming-of-age tale The Body (perhaps better known as Stand By Me, the film adaptation directed by the late Rob Reiner). Like the characters in King's story, Will and his friends are up against a world that doesn't care much about what happens to them; unlike King's characters who went out in search of death, in Janz's story death comes searching for them.

Highly recommended.


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