Books like The Burning

Trying to review The Burning is turning into a bit of a chore. I’ve restarted this review quite a few times, and I am as yet unable to put into words just exactly what I liked, or didn’t like, about the novel.Some books are just like that, I suppose. I read The Burning cover to cover; it wasn’t great, and it wasn’t bad. It has a ghost train, which is always awesome, and as a matter of principal garners it a bonus star. There are some good ideas here, but they don’t all come to fruition. Some of them, however, do. If I really had to name a downside to the story it would have something to do with the way events are wrapped up: I thought the ending was rather bizarre and OTT enough to cross the line into cheeseville. Other than that, if you enjoy 80’s style horror as King and Koontz used to do it, you might enjoy this. I’ve read other books by Little that I thought were better, though, so don’t expect a total mindblast. Except, of course, for the fact that it has a ghost train. Or have I mentioned that already?There are some truly sinister scenes here, which do deserve a mention, but there were also some things that didn’t make a lot of sense. Or maybe it was just because I was reading this with a sun baked and rum addled brain on a beach somewhere in the Indian Ocean.Hence the fairly non-committal rating of 2.5 (rounded up because of, yes you guessed it, the ghost train).