Book Review: Pleasant Valley

Reviewed By: Gina Metz - RAM

Pleasant Valley     Amazon US TPB Amazon Canada TPB
Eralides E. Cabrera
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Supernatural
AuthorHouse, 2005, 342 pps.

Pleasant Valley is the story of Nick Soter, who was raised and was a teenager in Pleasant Valley during the time of the Vietnam War. Pleasant Valley is a happy suburban town, where neighbors regularly get together and most are very conservative. Nick’s father is a Captain with the Highway Patrol and his mother is a homemaker, who lives to take care of her husband and son.

Nick is in high school and very musically talented. Although his main focus is playing for the church choir, which he has done since he was a small boy, he wants to be in a band and someday go to California and make it big. One night on his way to band practice with the new band he has joined, he accidentally enters the wrong basement and finds a dead body badly mutilated.

From that day on, Nick’s whole world changes and he is suddenly forced to grow up overnight and is drafted into the Vietnam War. When he returns from the war, he goes to California and tries to put Pleasant Valley out of his mind. Years later, after Nick gets married, his wife pushes him to return to Pleasant Valley to search out his roots and see if there is anyone left that he remembers. He returns to find that a terrible cult has taken over the town he knew and he and his wife feel compelled to try to stop them.

This was a decent book after beginning with a slow start. It is not one I would recommend for mystery readers that do not like the supernatural. I think the book could have been better if a little faster paced and without so much of a supernatural element that was difficult to believe.

Gina Metz - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Gina Metz - RAM