When Stephanie moves to the notoriously cheap Perry Bar neighborhood of Birmingham, she's just happy to find an affordable room for rent that's large enough not to deserve her previous room's nickname, "the cell." The eccentric -- albeit slightly overly-friendly -- landlord seems nice and welcoming enough, the ceilings are high, and all of the other tenants are also girls. Things aren't great, but they're stable. Or at least that's what she tells herself when she impulsively hands over enough money to cover the first month's rent and decides to give it a go.
But soon after she becomes uneasy about her rash decision. She hears things in the night. Feels them. Things...or people...who aren't there in the light. Who couldn't be there, because after-all, her door is locked every night, and the key is still in place in the morning. Concern soon turns to terror when the voices she hears and presence she feels each night become hostile. It's clear that something very bad has happened in this house. And something even worse is happening now. Stephanie has to find a way out, before whatever's going on in the house finds her first.
Before I start my review, I just want to say one thing: the landlord in this book reminded me so much of the character "Mr. Razor" that showed up in a recent episode of Doctor Who (an alias of an integral character), down to the accent and everything:
This is my second Adam Nevill book, my first one being The Ritual, which I reviewed in September of 2016, and thought it was pretty good overall. One thing that he's really good at is avoiding the slow burn that some horror/thriller novels tend to adopt. Right off the bat, you know, you just know that shit is gonna go down, and something really bad is going to happen. While The Ritual was a tiny bit slow burn, this one hits the ground running and right away, things are looking fishy, and not everything is as it seems.
This book clocks in at just under 630 pages. It doesn't feel like it's that long. The chapters are not overly long, and tension keeps building and building before reaching a breaking point before the first denouement of the novel. There is a slight breather about halfway through, but it's only for a very teeny tiny portion before diving in for more. There's no real false sense of security that happens in this book unlike in The Ritual. The main character Stephanie got a lot of mental (and physical) shouting from me. "JUST LEAVE! FORGET ABOUT THE MONEY AND GET OUT OF THERE!" was most of the frustration that she got from me. But there wouldn't be a story if she had up and left after her first night at the house. Knacker, the landlord, and his cousin Fergal make me want to take a shower for seven hours to cleanse myself of the ickiness. In addition, the house is one of the creepiest novel locations I've read in 2017. You could not pay me enough to even walk past it. At first, this book seems to be going in a criminal horror direction, but that itself is a smokescreen, and, of course, there are larger things at play at the house.
Going off that, the thing that Nevill does exceptionally well here, as he did in The Ritual is examine the occult. I'm assuming that's a major theme in all of his work. It works for the story he is telling here, and it really gives the characters development. It propels both character and plot forward, and it's done in such a way that it does not feel out of place. By the end of this book, you want to take a shower for two hours to cleanse yourself.
No One Gets Out Alive is another success from Adam Nevill. It's unique, chilling, suspenseful and, most importantly, scary. It makes you uncomfortable and suspicious. It's a nail-biter, and you simultaneously are willing the characters to get out and hoping that they survive. It only comes up for air once or twice, but continuously becomes more ominous and thrilling as it comes to the conclusion. I'm giving No One Gets Out Alive 4/5 - Nevill has done it again and created a novel that stayed with me after I finished it.
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