Have You Read This? A Light Most Hateful by Hailey Piper

 

The drive-in is a vanishing part of the cultural landscape, which is rather sad considering the myriad and delightful horrors that once graced their screens. Many people have fond memories of the drive-in, even those who haven’t watched horror movies, but for horror fans, the drive-in conjures thoughts of monsters from the stars like the ones from Joe Lansdale’s magnum opus The Drive-In. It’s fitting, then, that Hailey Piper begins her latest book A Light Most Hateful at a drive-in on the night of a reality-rending storm, but Piper also takes the concept to some original and terrifying places.

This journey into the frightfully fantastic begins in the small town of Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania where Olivia lives after running away from home. She has managed to eke out a life while she deals with small-town boredom and an unrequited crush on her best friend Sunflower. Then a summer storm shows up, bringing more than just thunder and lightning. This storm brings with it the power to bend the will of the people of Chapel Hill to an otherworldly intelligence, even as it transforms the landscape. Olivia now tries to survive the night and rescue Sunflower before the storm and the being it serves wipes Chapel Hill off the map.

This tale’s beginning in the drive-in and what happens to people after the storm approaches makes it feel like a by-the-book but still enjoyable monster movie that would entertain the late night drive-in crowd, but Piper has always excelled at taking her fiction in new and exciting directions that subvert her audience’s expectations. Rather than a simple tale of running and more running from a mob of brainwashed humanity, Piper has crafted a tale that explores the power and limits of friendship, exploring both the bonds that strengthen us and those that hold us back. Without revealing too much of the twist that brilliantly transforms the book as much as an unnatural storm, Piper also explores concepts of identity and the connective threads that are so tenuous yet somehow manage to hold us together. Come for the pseudo-zombies, but stay for the high-concept, mind-bending story.