Covenant

exciting suspense thriller

Feeling like a post traumatic syndrome disorder victim, bone weary from reporting all the scandalous news fit to print, reporter Joe Kieran leaves the Chicago Tribune. He accepted a journalist position as the night reporter at the Terrel Daily Times. Two months on the job Joe is bored. His daily monitoring the police radio has led to his driving to a reported scene once and that proved a false alarm. --- Remaining diligent, the persistent Joe is stunned when Dispatch directs a mobile unit to investigate an apparent leaper off the Terrel Peak. It was not the leap that surprises Joe, but the Dispatcher¿s use of the words ¿another one¿. Joe begins investigating the history of Peak leapers. He discovers a harrowing seemingly valid long term trend. On the same date in May someone young jumps. Warned to back off his inquiries, Joe continues to dig obsessed with the need to know why seemingly rationale contented children with no prior suicidal signs abruptly leap the Peak to their deaths. Interviewing five seemingly connected women, four of them still grieving mothers, reticent townsfolk especially the cops and his peers on the paper, and a self proclaimed Gypsy fortune teller, Joe will relearn the lesson he was taught in Chicago, but deadlier this time, that the truth does not set you free. --- This exciting suspense thriller has the audience hooked with a need to know why once Joe begins questioning what the dispatcher meant by ¿another one¿. The story line is driven by the small-town reluctance to share anything with the outsider, a big city reporter who is rusticating in their minds. Joe is terrific as he struggles to find out what makes a mentally healthy child decide suddenly to leap. John Everson has written a powerful tale as readers wonder whether it is a coincidence, the supernatural or a serial killer behind the suicides. --- Harriet Klausner

4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

What a great find!

Spine tingling and a great find. John Everson is a new voice in horror and worth reading. This is horror done right and the best is yet to come from this amazing new author. Read it and suggest it to your friends. Holds your interest from first to last page.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

A good read

I have never read this author before, I am always a sucker for books that have to do with small towns with secrets. I was pleasantly surprised with this book.
It was quite a page turner and kept me entertained. I am looking forward to the sequel.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Decent read - but beware the porn

This was a worth-while story. But it should have come with an NC-17 rating. The overly described rapes and sex-scenes scattered through the book are over the top and superfluous. Glad I only paid a buck. Readers beware.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Okay read

This was an okay horror read, but it did have graphic sex/rape scenes that were a little gruesome.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Creepy!

I could not put this down.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Creepy and not for the faint of heart

A reporter starts investigating suicides and finds more than he bargained for.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A Must Read!! The demon will pull you in with each turn of the page!!

John Everson delivers a book full of thrills, suspense,twists and a demon no one should ever make a pact with.

From the start you are hook. You have to find out why people are ending their lives by going off the cliff. Might just look like suicidal teens but it goes much further back in time than that. There was a pact make with the demon who dwells in the caverns in the peak where the lighthouse once shinned bright.

Stories that the town doesn't talk about. There is only one person who want to find out the truth, a reporter not from the town, one who knows there is a dark secret at the cliff.

With each turn of the page clues come together. Twists happen that maybe you weren't expecting. The demon is always there talking to who he sees as his.

Never make a pact with a demon. There is no way out of it.
What price would you pay if you made a pact with him?

Another brilliant piece of work by John Everson. His books grab hold of you and don't let go. You will find you do not want to put this book down. You want to know how it all plays out.

Do not pass up the chance to read this book. A must read.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Returning to a neglected passion

For the past several years my reading has been of a technical nature, programming, the sort of books that are rather easy to put down. Enter COVENANT. I downloaded this to my e-reader to review COVENANT prior to giving a print copy to my daughter for Christmas. Everson unveils a plot that takes its time to develop the setting and main characters, while keeping the story moving fast enough that you just don't want to stop reading. COVENANT starts off quickly in a small-town setting - sparking my interest with a young couple, a mysterious suicide, and a displaced big city reporter. As reporter Joe Kieran works through the difficulties of discovering Terrell's closely held fears and secrets, he learns that things are not as black and white as a reporter's logic requires. In the end, the hidden gem - the surprise - is artfully held by Everson and revealed with perfect timing. My joy in reading is the creation of the mind's-eye image of every character and every scene. Everson provides just the right amount of details to guide me, as the reader, to create the images of my choosing. I found COVENANT to be a thoroughly enjoyable reading experience and left me wanting more... with the stage perfectly set for SACRIFICE.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Plot had potential, but...

The plot had potential, and the first third of this nearly 300 page book was decent. However, it quickly deteriorated into a series of violent, blood-soaked rape and occult sex scenes. Written in third-person omniscient, the author appears to have tapped his inner teenage boy to narrate these scenes in common street slang (read: bad porno vernacular), a vulgar deviation from the style that opens the story. I felt as though I had stumbled upon some disturbing violent sex fetish ad on Craigslist or some other raunchy site in the underbelly of the Internet. Then, after the string of scenes concludes, the rest of the story comes to a screeching halt, followed by a little epithet of more homicidal sex to set himself up for a sequel. I completed the story, hoping the actual story line would make up for the excessive vulgarity, to no avail. I emphasize, I'm not a prude--I understand what the author was trying to convey, but the distasteful manner he approached rape and even "possessed" sex was unnecessarily distracting from an already mediocre plot, to the extent that it seemed as though such scenes became the entire focus, rather than an explanatory feature.

I definitely understand why this was so cheap. Dear reader, you'll be getting what you paid for with this one!

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Couldn't put it down

Typically, I read romance novels, but for $.99 I thought I'd try it and read it on the beach during my vacation. I was expecting to be disappointed and probably not even finish the book, but I ended up buying a light for my Nook so I could finish the story on the ride home! I read this book in a day. Definitely a page turner for me, but as mentioned in other reviews,there are some graphic sex/rape scenes

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

What a buy !

This book was really great. I can't believe it was only 99 cents. I am going to have to read the second book, The Sacrifice. This was a page turner. Held my interest the entire book. The action didn't slow down at all in the middle chapters. Don't miss this one !

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Original and interesting

Well written and original, I truly enjoyed this book! The story is suspenseful with good character development-I couldn't put it down. Fair warning, though, there are some graphic sex scenes and some graphic gore that may not be for the faint-hearted.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

The kind of in-depth, detailed story you usually only find from the "masters."

Everson's mass-market debut tells the story of Joe Kieran, a reporter who's exiled himself to sleepy little Terrel. Unfortunately for Joe, Terrel's not what it appears and he just can't let go of a good story. It's a complete tale in and of itself but you'll definitely want to check out the sequel, Sacrifice.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Demon-style Deliverance

Though the storyline of this gripping work of wickedness will almost immediately draw you into Everson¿s foreboding world, you¿ll want to take your time reading this work of literary art. The imagery of the cliff, a focal point in the book in more ways than one to be sure, and syntax throughout the entire book are sources of pure delight. An example of such is: ¿It stretched almost straight up from the beach, a jagged, rocky wall that, from the road, looked higher than a skyscraper. One thin prominence stretched out over the choppy inlet like a beckoning finger, a signal of unknown import to the sky¿ (p. 10). I don¿t want to give away all the true causes of the personification of the cliff and caves that have caused many people to jump to their deaths in the months of October and May in the town of Terrel, but suffice it to say that a demon and fey (and I don¿t mean the airy fairy well wishing kind of fae¿rather, these ugly fey are more along the harbingers of death kind) are involved. The goings on in the cave (particularly in the crystal room) are simultaneously erotic in a vampiricly lustful kind of way ,yet also grotesque in their lack of concern for others mode, so you might find yourself left with your own rather difficult to assess images for a while. Black humor is employed from time to time as well with lines like, ¿And he really did wish for a break in the tediously dull evening---even if it was a broken-body break¿ (p. 7). These words are coming from a reporter¿s mind shortly after a kid jumped off the cliff and killed himself. Like his characters who were endowed with certain gifts, like painting exceedingly well, after the covenant was made, you might even begin to wonder, with writing this good, if Everson agreed to his own covenant in order to create this devilishly dark and terrifying tale.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A good read!

A little predictable but still a good read on a rainy day!

Strange Story

One of the few I will probably delete from my Nook library.

Different ! Not sure what to make of it, but kept me reading.

No text was provided for this review.

Bull shiz on a stick

Horrible stuff, did not like. Ok overall but i hated it

Horrible, wish I could give no stars.....

boring, boring, stupid. I forced myself to finish it. don't bother.