Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Reviews of Off Season

Off Season
Off Season
Author: Jack Ketchum
ISBN-13: 9780843956962
ISBN-10: 0843956968
Publication Date: 5/30/2006
Pages: 308
Edition: Reprint
Rating:
  • Currently 4/5 Stars.
 144

4 stars, based on 144 ratings
Publisher: Leisure
Book Type: Mass Market Paperback
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

28 Book Reviews submitted by our Members...sorted by voted most helpful

Bibliocrates avatar reviewed Off Season on + 252 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 5
Sick! Fantastic! I am so glad that Jack Ketchum decided to release the uncut, uncensored version of this, his first novel, not that I ever read that first published edition. He explains his reasons for doing so in this book's afterward, interesting. In this book we follow a pack of wild savage children, no, not children, beasts, a family of beasts, vultures, as they hunt for their next meal, their prey, a group of young New Yorkers, Carla and her boyfriend Jim, her sister Marjie and Dan, her friend Laura and Nick, staying in a cabin near the beach town of Dead River in the off season, September. I highly recommend this book! Be prepared for an extremely disturbing read where you will learn how human jerky is made, no happy endings here!
reviewed Off Season on + 29 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 4
this was one of ketchum's first. If you like gruesome stories then you will love this one. This one is about a savage family with the taste for flesh. Fasten you seatbelt for this ride. Ketchum's work tends to be very dark so be prepared to be disturbed.
mztrees avatar reviewed Off Season on + 153 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 3
I really enjoyed this book. However, if you don't like blood and guts, this book is not recommended for you. It is very bloody and graphic. Jack Ketchum tells the tale of imaginary forest people (you can judge if they are human) who like to survive on canabalism. If you want a thrill chill, this book may be for you.
maggieminnich avatar reviewed Off Season on + 400 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
A truely gruesome, plot twisting, riviting novel from Jack Ketchum, as only he dares to write. This book is NOT for the faint of heart. While, at times, I found myself to be wincing at the details and audacity, I still couldn't put the book down and just HAD to finish it...and what a finish it was!! Totally unexpected and surprising. Absolutely LOVED this book and Jack Ketchum. So much so, I'm already starting to read his next one.
missyh avatar reviewed Off Season on + 85 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
This is one of the most sick, twisted, and demented books I have ever read. That being said, it was AWESOME!! Fantastic read if you are in the mood for a horror book.

This...this....THIS is exactly why you dont just go off into the boonies somewhere for a nice relaxing vacation. Go where theres LOTS of other folks around. Less likely you'll be tortured and eaten by a bunch of cannibals then. CREEPY!!
reviewed Off Season on
Helpful Score: 1
Gore galore!! I love Jack Ketchum's work. He has a knack for drawing the reader in and dragging them on an insane roller-coaster ride.

This book is for true horror fans; not for the timid. Jack paints a very graphic picture with his novels and you are never bored.
rcketman avatar reviewed Off Season on + 38 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
I'll think twice before renting a summer home, hunting cabin or ski lodge again. Book flies by and scares the heck out of you. Jack Ketchum's mind is full of dark and scary thoughts. Keep those thoughts coming to print, Jack! On to read the follow up book, Offspring what horrors has Jack Ketchum in store for us now.
cmcav04 avatar reviewed Off Season on + 25 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
I read this book in one sitting (hard to put down). Very intense and graphic! Looking forward to reading THE GIRL NEXT DOOR and other works.
reviewed Off Season on + 119 more book reviews
Awesomely gruesome, definately not for the squeamish. Very detailed scenes.
DimensionX avatar reviewed Off Season on + 65 more book reviews
This book was vicious. Once the attack started, it was relentless. I finished the book in just a few days...though I would have finished sooner if I hadn't kept peeking ahead to find out who survived. This isn't your typical "all the good guys will live through this" kind of books. Very unpredictable. I recommend this book!
maicie avatar reviewed Off Season on + 4 more book reviews
Board up the windows and turn on the lights. Ketchum writes horror! This uncut version offers a no-holds barred gore fest of human flesh. Includes a recipe for man-jerky. Highly recommend.
mcrow avatar reviewed Off Season on
Jack Ketchum is a little less known than he should be, he's among the best in the horror market. Stephen King himself said that Off Season is one of the best books he's read and that Jack Ketchum is one of the masters of horror.

Off Season was his very first novel, a story of group of young couples spending a weekend together in a rural area near the east coast. They are besieged by a band of murderous hillbillies and fight for survival.

Off Season is an in your face, splatterpunk classic that brings what death is like to you in a completely ,no bones about it, brutal story that will play on your inner morbidity.
reviewed Off Season on + 224 more book reviews
If you like Richard Laymon you'll like the book. It will keep you awake at night. Blood, gore, violence, sex, cannabilism, revenge and sheer terror, this story has it all.
knittymama avatar reviewed Off Season on + 424 more book reviews
Strange story. Very scary and disgusting. I couldn't put it down but I know I will NEVER read anything by this author again. I think I will not sleep tonight. The author's images are still to vivid in my mind.
reviewed Off Season on + 117 more book reviews
Probably THE most gruesome horror story I have ever read, and that's saying a lot. Good, rousing action in addition. IF you have an aversion to explicit gruesomeness or rough sex you probably should leave this book OFF your "have read" list. Remember,you have been warned!
reviewed Off Season on + 6 more book reviews
Excellent read
reviewed Off Season on + 170 more book reviews
This book is typical Ketchum. Gross and very explicit. I think based on all the uproar that I read it caused, I was a little disappointed that it wasn't any worse any any of his other novels. Maybe it was the time in which it was first published??
sewingnancyl avatar reviewed Off Season on + 78 more book reviews
Uncut, Uncensored Version..... The sun goes down, the moon goes up and the savage human family with a taste for fish lurks in the darkening woods......
reviewed Off Season on + 911 more book reviews
Very scary and unsettling.
morebooks avatar reviewed Off Season on
Great book! Gory to the end. Not for the squeamish. I can't wait to read Off Spring.
reviewed Off Season on + 92 more book reviews
WILD!!!!!!!Can't wait for the sequel!!!!!!!!
reviewed Off Season on + 9 more book reviews
Fast paced and shocking!! Not for the faint-of heart!!
reviewed Off Season on + 21 more book reviews
Stephen King says "If you read Off Season on Thanksgiving, you probably won't sleep until Christmas."
reviewed Off Season on + 7 more book reviews
A short, but scary read..
reviewed Off Season on + 283 more book reviews
This is a great book by this author and one of my favorites.
reviewed Off Season on + 32 more book reviews
September. A beautiful New York editor retreats to a lonely cabin on a hill in the quiet Main beach town of Dead River--off season--awaiting her sister and friends. Nearby, a savage human family with a taste for flesh lurks in the darkening woods, watchng, waiting for the moon to rise and night to fall...

And before too many hours pass, five civilized, sophistcated people and one tired old country sheriff will learn just how primitive we all are beneath the surface...and that there are no limits at all to the will to survive.
mahuff avatar reviewed Off Season on + 41 more book reviews
grafic.. but Icoulld not seem to put this book down.. I have never read one of Ketchum books before . but I will start reading them now. I loved it.
reviewed Off Season on + 354 more book reviews
GREAT READ,FINISHED IT IN ONE DAY.