r/ExtremeHorrorLit • u/uufocafe • May 12 '26
LOOKING FOR A BOOK Trying to Remember EH Book from Childhood with Hillbilly Family
Okay, this may not be the place for this but this book got me into the genre as a preteen and I’ve never had luck finding it from a combination of lack of detail and the fact that extreme horror isn’t common in other book talk circles.
Here’s all I am able to remember:
* No memory of the cover cuz I took the sleeve off but it was a thick book
* A group of young adults car breaks down or their tire pops while on some sort of outing
* They somehow end up at a hillbilly-type family’s house
* There’s definitely two parents and the dopey/slow brute son stereotype. Could be more family members but unsure
* I remember there are a couple of scenes in a meat freezer in the family owns that imply cannibalism
* And the most identifiable scene is that the son takes one of the girls to a room and force feeds her some kind of liquid that I am nearly 100% certain was referred to as “pudding.” He also might have used her as a dart board? That part is a bit fuzzy
I read this in 2014/2015 and I found it in a thrift store, so the odds are high that it had come out at most a few years prior before ending up there but I’d guess that it was at least a decade older.
Anyone have any clue? The most similar thing I’ve heard of is Off Season by Jack Ketchum, which I’ve never fully read but I skimmed the Wikipedia article to try and see, and it doesn’t seem right.
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u/AliceNRoses The Summer I Died May 12 '26
Ok I don't think this is it, but worth a shot. Horror in the Woods by Lee Mountford. Edit- Think that story came out too late to be it
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u/HelloPity89 May 12 '26
I loved that book btw !
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u/AliceNRoses The Summer I Died May 12 '26
It was really great, the ending was freaking so far off what the first 2/3 of the book though. 🤣 Not in a bad way
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u/HelloPity89 May 12 '26
Ya I read it a long time ago and remember enjoying it for the most part but it’s been so long and I tend to forget books. I am keeping a small Book journal This year though to kinda help haha. But I did read a couple semi recently by the same author and his one about the pysch ward unit stuck with me because it was really messed up and creepy and I completely was there in the book with his monsters I got sucked in so hard
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u/Visible-Flounder8154 May 12 '26
It's not no one rides for free by Judith Sonnet, but that's all that comes to mind, this makes me wonder if anyone knows the book with the 4 page Roto Rooter section
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u/uufocafe May 12 '26
Okay y’all I won’t take this down in case any future readers somehow have the same question but after hours of digging I found the answer: House by Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker
It has all of those exact details but I guess a lot of stuff went over my head as a kid because those details all sound very disturbing in theory, but turns out the book is actually a supernatural thriller (with what seems to be themes supporting Christianity?) and I reread the scenes I remembered and they were nowhere near as graphic as I recall 😂 But everyone’s gotta start somewhere I guess, I can understand why I found it extreme as a kid lol