Breed Review

TITLE Breed: A Novel
AUTHOR Chase Novak
PUBLICATION September 4th 2012 by Mulholland Books
READ August 29 - 30, 2012

Alex and Leslie Twisden lead charmed lives-fabulous jobs, a luxurious town house on Manhattan's Upper East Side, a passionate marriage. What they don't have is a child, and as they try one infertility treatment after the next, yearning turns into obsession. As a last-ditch attempt to make their dream of parenthood come true, Alex and Leslie travel deep into Slovenia, where they submit to a painful and terrifying procedure that finally gives them what they so fervently desire . . . but with awful consequences.

Ten years later, cosseted and adored but living in a house of secrets, the twins Adam and Alice find themselves locked into their rooms every night, with sounds coming from their parents' bedroom getting progressively louder, more violent, and more disturbing.

Driven to a desperate search for answers, Adam and Alice set out on a quest to learn the true nature of the man and woman who raised them. Their discovery will upend everything they thought they knew about their parents and will reveal a threat so horrible that it must be escaped, at any cost.

A copy was provided by Hachette Book Group Canada in exchange for an honest review.

As an avid horror fan, I have been pretty upset about how much I have been let down by the genre when it comes to novels. Well thanks to Breed, I think I have found the solution to that problem; I need to be reading adult horror, not YA horror. The content is much more vivid and I can honestly say that this book chilled me to the bone. This was horror at its finest, we had an evil scientist injecting people with animal hormones and we got to experience the changes that these hormones brought in people. Let me tell you, it wasn't pretty!

Leslie and Alex are in love, they have all the money they could ask for, but the one thing that they want cannot be bought, a child. They have been through years and years of procedures and nothing is working. Upon meeting a couple that they remember from their infertility meetings they realize the wife is now pregnant, through this couple they are recommended to Dr. Kis, a doctor in Slovenia. Once they make the venture to this foreign country and get the necessary shots they are finally blessed with a bun in the oven. But as the pregnancy wears on, changes start happening to their bodies. Hair is growing thick and full where it never grew before and they have a hunger like they could have never imagined. Being witness to the changes Leslie and Alex go through from the third person narrative of the story worked very well in this novel. It was as if a horror movie was playing out in front of me on a theatre screen. I was fully engrossed in this story and I hungrily (pun intended!) turned the pages throughout.

This is a frightening tale at its core, Chase Novak has taken the one place that any child should be able to find comfort and turned it into the scariest beast imaginable. The trouble that Adam and Alice go through to escape their parents is quite immense, and it's for a good reason. They are scared, the sounds they hear their parents making late in the night, the fact that from 6:30 PM on they are locked in their bedrooms until the door opens in the AM and the revolving door of household pets that goes through the house are all making them fear for their lives. The story is a bit of a slow build in Part 1 (before they have the children) but once Part 2 begins it's a thrilling chase with no good endings in sight.

I can honestly say that I have never read anything like Breed, and I hope that I have the pleasure to read something that I enjoy just as much in the future. This is definitely a book for horror fans, there is mystery, suspense and even gore, it's perfect! I was shocked as the novel wore on and was left dumb struck by the ending.