Two traveling couples are stranded on the same night and end up at The Wayside Inn - a deserted stop off a backwoods road in rural Alabama. At first, the inn looks pleasant enough though their hosts seem a bit strange. But their dinner conversation becomes tense, and then the acutal meal becomes even worse. And that is just the beginning of a night when they are forced to play a horrible game & the house itself begins to turn on them.
So far, I would rank this book at the bottom of the ones I have read by Dekker. It's been a long time since I've read anything by Peretti. I read "This Present Darkness" when it came out years ago, but I don't think I've read anything of his since. This book was a bit disappointing because the whole plot seemed so formulaic for a horror story. Strangers come together into what turns into a high stress environment. A killer pits them against one another. Events in their past that they have tried to bury are revealed & used against them. You check into a hotel, but you cannot check out. Welcome to the Hotel California....or is that the Roach Motel?
I understand there is a movie based on this book. I wondered if that was even part of the plan as the book was written, because the end of the book certainly seems to set you up for a sequel.
One element I did like was the one foreshadowed in the quote on the first page before the prologue - "The light came into the darkness, but the darkness did not understand it." I thought the way that was developed in the story was interesting.
Ok for a run-of-the-mill horror/suspense novel. But not one of my favorites.
Sojourner
Sorry you didn't like it as much. The whole story gave me the chills.
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