Jenifer Lynn’s Winters’ Resonance (A Series of Echoes Book 1) is a horror novel that scares us with the most frightening monster of all—teenagers. Seriously, it’s a chilling story of killer humanoids that appear as teens from out of the night to wreak destruction. In the prologue, a family on their way to Disney World encounters these creatures and the results scar the youngest member, Julia Winters.
The plot advances to the year 2000 as mysterious events start happening around an adult Julia. Julia is now a photographer for the local newspaper, and she meets a detective covering an unusual assault case on a young man. The detective should keep Julia away, but something about her makes him want to collaborate with the photographer. At the same time, another man, named Bash, exits a train into the same town, though the railway hasn’t seen an active train on it in years. The three worlds collide when Julia is kidnapped.
The author knows how to write tense scenes, and the teenagers are truly frightening. The novel excels at hiding information so that the powerful monsters remain a mystery, keeping the reader in the dark. Also, this horror novel expands into a larger backstory far more expansive than what a reader might expect from the dust jacket. Without revealing too much, the novel walks a tightrope between enticing the reader with fascinating details without explaining away the threat, and thus the horror, of the monsters.
However, while this is great for tension, Winters’ Resonance could have inserted more explanation of the origins of the murderous kids in the prologue. Unfortunately, the reader doesn’t find out much about them and where they came from until the second half of the book. The unknown is a great vehicle to create suspense and it works here, but at some point, the curtain has to pull back. That said, the book’s ending is satisfying as it wraps up its own plot points. The reader shouldn’t feel disappointed.
Winters’ Resonance has a great premise and appropriately spooky vibe running the entire length of the narrative. Its creepy scenes and interesting characters make this first entry in the A Series of Echoes worth reading.