THE ANOMALY - Michael Rutger

5 stars

CAVES. A close-knit group of people. A documentary in progress. Supernatural spooks. Lots of humor, laughs, and horror. I loved this so much.

Concept: ★★★
Cave factor: ★★★★★
Pacing: ★★★★
Overall enjoyment: ★★★★★

Don't let the meh reviews fool you. If you're a fan of caves, you'll love this. If you're a fan of documentary-based horror films, you'll love this. If you're a fan of closed-in groups of people experiencing some tough stuff, yeah you'll love this too.

The Anomaly follows a down-on-their-luck YouTube web series about a middle-aged man named Nolan Moore who explores the conspiracy theories and weird places of the world. For YouTube fans who understand the Buzzfeed Unsolved reference, this part of the story feels a lot like what would happen if that show got weirder, older, and less entertaining. The documentary group is scraping by, waiting for their one big break. And then, they find it.

Hidden within the Grand Canyon lies a cave. An explorer named Kincaid found it during his initial surveys of America's West, and he said amazing archaeological treasures existed inside. But then he never told people where to find it, and the cave disappeared over time.

Nolan is interested in finding the cave, but like all of his other documentaries, he's not really expecting to find it.

The group enters the Grand Canyon and—to everyone's surprise— they find the cave. That's the easy part.

Unbeknownst to them, the cave has some secrets to share. There was a reason Kincaid never wanted people to find this cave. And Nolan's crew is about to find out why.

Ahhhhhhhh. This was so fun to read, folks. First off, I'm highly biased as I love any and all horror stories involving caves. I'm a huge fan of the movie The Descent, featuring caves and spooky things, and one of my favorite reads of last year was The Luminous Dead, again about caves and spooky things. So it's with no surprise that I offer this up to fellow cave fans as another entry into that sub-genre of thriller/horror.

Another selling point for this book was the surprising amount of humor - like actual, laughing out loud in the room humor. Ken, the series' producer, is my favorite character because of that.

Without getting into spoilers, I do agree with some of the reviewers who didn't enjoy the ending. I did enjoy it, but that's because I don't need thrillers to be grounded in reality—especially when they're explicitly clear that they have spooky elements. So I guess, a word of caution to those who do care about that kind of thing. If you're entering this spooky, horror-movie vibe book and expecting a logical boogieman, maybe this one isn't for you.