★★★ out of ★★★★★
By Stephen Graham Jones
It is very hard to write a book report on Night of the Mannequins, the upcoming novella from award winning author Stephen Graham Jones, because to say too much would spoil the fun of letting this bizarre story unfold like a B-movie come to life on the page.
Here’s the set up: a group of friends find an abandoned mannequin (and in a horror book is there really any other kind?) in the woods one summer and make him one of the group, including him in all activities and dubbing him “Manny”.
Later, one the gang gets a job at a movie theater and of course uses her new found authority to sneak the others into shows without buying tickets. After getting busted by the theater manager, the others think it would be epic to prank her lame boss by dressing Manny up, seating him at a show, and watch as the manager freaks out when he tries to check Manny for a ticket. But when the prank doesn’t exactly go as planned and one by one the gang starts dying, Manny’s friendship and the group’s sanity are called into question.
This book is my first experience reading Stephen Graham Jones and even though the stream of consciousness style and the monster movie/ creature feature vibe isn’t really my cup of tea, it was great fun and I will definitely be adding more of Graham Jones’ work to my TBR list.
Night of the Mannequins will be released in September by Tor.com. You can pre-order your copy on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller.