The Hunger ★★★★☆

The Hunger (Click Here To Buy)

★★★★☆

The Hunger by Alma Katsu is a fictionalized account of the Donner Party.

I bought this book from Goodwill and read it because Stephen King called it, “Deeply, deeply disturbing.”

It’s 1846 and a number of families in the Donner party are headed west in covered wagons. A young boy goes missing and is found strangely killed. Tensions rise as the group starts to feel like someone…or something is following them. One by one, members of the party go mad and act in disturbing and bizarre manners. Food begins to run low as the trail is more difficult to travel…and then the snow comes.

This was a super unique supernatural take on the Donner Party, which was really fun to read - it also creeped me out! The idea of evil as a contagious disease and also people turning into monsters worked so well with the story to make for some good historical fiction. After I finished it I obviously had to wiki the hell out of the Donner Party story - Katsu used mostly the same names and storylines, making the tale all the more devour-able. It was a bit slow to start and flash-backs at times seemed random, but overall I’d say give it a go.

If you liked The Hunger, I also recommend The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, In The Tall Grass by Stephen King and Joe Hill, Devolution by Max Brooks, and The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay.

Happy reading!

Ms.Bjork