Age of Consent
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
The house has a terrifying history and now history is repeating itself. Once upon a time, a group of student radicals found a leader and followed him beyond all reason. Years before that, in the same place, a prophet was visited by an angel, and followed it to a horrible end.
Peter Coulter ignored the strange rumors about the house—until things started changing. His sister Ginny, once outgoing and popular, is now secretive and self-destructive. Peter’s nightmares have become so vivid, so real. His father is possessed by a sudden calling from God. And all of them have seen the long-haired stranger in the woods. The one who wants them to do such shameful things, and who beckons them too, to follow him.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mittelmark's debut spins sizable doses of sexual grotesquerie into an\t\t otherwise derivative haunted-house yarn, in which vindictive spirits loose in a\t\t smalltown house coax a family into bizarre experiments with sex, drugs and\t\t self-mutilation. Ignoring the house's macabre history, the Coulter family moves\t\t in and is immediately possessed by ravenous carnal tendencies and violent\t\t erotic visions. As the professorial father obsesses over researching the\t\t house's legacy, son Peter sheds his teenage discomfiture and plunges\t\t uncharacteristically into high school romance and hardcore drugs. Meanwhile,\t\t his sister, always the popular girl, withdraws into depression and\t\t self-infliction, her only friend a shadowy stranger that lurks in her room.\t\t While Peter unravels his family's newfound woes and the house's sinister past,\t\t flashbacks reveal the drug-fueled tale of the Vietnam-era radicals who\t\t previously fell prey to the house's will. This shocker succeeds partially as a\t\t paranormal coming-of-age tale, akin to slasher-movie parables about the dangers\t\t of sex and drugs, and may appeal to teenagers looking for a quick and\t\t digestible genre exercise. However, seasoned horror fans and attentive readers\t\t will find little to sink their teeth into, as the cookie-cutter plot speeds\t\t toward a particularly banal conclusion.
