What the Night Knows - Dean Koontz

What the Night Knows – Dean Koontz

(2.5 / 5)

Not one of his best I must admit. Overall it was an entertaining story but ultimately left me feeling more unsatisfied than satisfied.

John is a homicide detective who lost his entire family to a serial killer when he was a teenager 20 years earlier. He killed Alton Turner Blackwood that night, but Blackwood is back. Using the bodies of less than wholesome people, he uses person after person until his ultimate goal can be completed… Revenge on John and his family. And to finish the killing spree that he started.

I enjoyed the start of the book and how Koontz gradually gave away piece by piece of information. It kept me enthralled through the first few chapters. In fact, the whole book was quite good up until the chapters from the children’s point of view. I don’t think I have ever heard such poor portrayal of children. All three of them were so completely unbelievable it pretty much turned me off the entire book. Then some more chapters with the adults point of view would make me forget that I wasn’t enjoying it… And then the children would have a point of view again… And cue the eye rolling.

I did enjoy the diary of Blackwood. It was interesting hearing how he turned into such a monster. I just found it frustrating that every character either had some innate evil, or they were so inherently good. No character seemed to be in the middle.

It had some spooky moments, but overall it was more frustrating than frightening. And what is with all the big words that he uses!? I’m fairly sure he used his spell-check thesaurus quite a bit while writing this! And when the children started using those big words.. It was just too much for me.

I did enjoy it overall though. The storyline made up for the poorly portrayed characters, and I enjoyed the narrator of the audio version.