Author: JL Merrow
Publisher: JMS Books
Pages/Word Count: 22 Pages
At a Glance: A good read if your into quickies (no pun intended)
Blurb: The memory of this party could haunt him forever …
Dragged along to a haunted house by his mates, Sam’s at the Halloween party from hell — the guy he fancied has turned out to be a bigot, and Sam has just outed himself to his whole football team.
Escaping to the garden, he meets James, an enigmatic stranger with a mischievous smile, and the evening soon takes a turn for the better. The night may be chilly but the heat between Sam and James is hotter than Hades.
But James has a role to play in the evening’s ghostly entertainment, and it’s a story with a deadly ending. Unless Sam can change the script and stop history repeating itself, “till death do us part” will come sooner than he thinks.
Review: JL Merrow’s Trick or Treat starts off, interestingly enough, with Sam talking to a certain body part as he’s outside watering the vegetation. As Sam is zipping up his pants, an unexpected voice speaks to him from out of nowhere and scares the bejeezus out of him. Turns out it’s another young man, James, who’s out and about before the big ghostly show that’s suppose to happen at this particular haunted house.
Sam and James get to talking as they share a bottle of vodka, and before you know it… they’re bumping against each other. After they’ve finished having their fun, Sam is about to ask James if he’d care to see him again, when James suddenly turns to run off into the trees…
Now, at this point, Trick or Treat starts to pick up when Sam goes back into the house to meet up with the friends he showed up with, hoping that James is among the group of people that have gathered to watch the spook show. And… I have to stop right here so as to not spoil Trick or Treat’s surprising ending.
It’s a very short story, about 22 pages, and it did hold my interest throughout the reading, but I really would have liked to have found out more about Sam and James. Especially James and the situation he found himself in!
It’s a good read if your into quickies (no pun intended). Not particularly scary, but still a good Halloween read, or any other time, for that matter, when one feels in the mood for a paranormal story. Would I reread it again? That would depend on if JL Merrow wrote a sequel, because the ending was interesting.
You can buy Trick or Treat here:
