Bad Girl in the Box, by Tim Curran

This was my second book read from Curran, and if I wanted to make this review REALLY short, I'd say just go read the other one (Blackout) instead.

Both books have a great premise.

Bad Girl in the Box: Meat starts falling from the sky and it's not a good idea to eat it.
Blackout: Black tentacles fall from the sky and it's not a good idea to touch them.

So why does Blackout work, and Bad Girl in the Box does not? Simple: Blackout is 100 pages and Bad Girl in the Box is 300 pages.

I'm not saying novellas are greater than novels (I love big books...and I cannot lie). As a matter of fact, there are some novellas out there that should've been trimmed down even more into short stories. BUT I will say that a high page count must be earned, and in my opinion, Curran does not with his newest novel. I feel that at least 20% of the book was descriptions of characters going insane from eating the meat. It's almost as if Curran was under the impression that the reader needed to be SUPER convinced that it wasn't a good idea to eat sky meat.

I love extreme horror as much as the next person (probably more), but this one was too long and a little clunky for me.

I do recommend Blackout though.

Grade: D

Review by Jason Cavallaro
jcavallaro42@gmail.com
Twitter: @pinheadspawn