I’ll never forget one summer as a young man, working on the Wildwood NJ boardwalk, on my way to my shift as the frog game attendant. I grabbed a quick slice of pizza and as I walked away from the restaurant, slice in hand, poised to take that first bite, a divebombing seagull slammed into the side of my head, apparently after that same first bite. That moment didn’t go the way either of us expected but it’s definitely not something I’ll ever forget.
BODY COUNT, the new horror novel by writer Codie Crowley takes me back to those “…wild, wild Wildwood days.” The hustle and bustle of the boardwalk at night. The roaring ocean, just just beyond the sand. The creepy, bonehead jocks on the prowl for a f_ck or a fight–whichever comes first–it’s all there in this book.
The story focuses on two main characters, Sundae and Lia. When Sundae was a child, she and her mother came to Wildwood to hide-out from Sundae’s abusive father. During this time, Sundae is visited by a supernatural entity that offers her three wishes in the form of saltwater taffies. Sundae’s time with the entity ends in bloodshed, murder and terror with Sundae narrowly escaping with her life only to return to the beach town nearly a decade later for her prom weekend.
Lia is a teenage rocker with confidence issues on her way to Wildwood to play a show with her band at her aunt’s restaurant / motel. Unfortunately, their last gig ended as soon as it began when Lia had a mid-song panic attack that ended the show abruptly. Lia hopes that this show is a chance at redemption but her extreme self doubt is making those odds pretty slim.
I enjoyed how the book ping-ponged between Sundae and Lia’s perspectives as their paths inevitably converged. When their stories diverged later on, it was fun to see how both of them handled their own personal entanglement with the sinister entity independently before coming together again with a more assured purpose in dealing with the threat. Their opposing personalities complimented each other during their interactions and made their interest in one another feel very natural.
Codie Crowley has a very detail-rich writing style. The mental images that her writing inspires keep you locked into the atmosphere and ambiance of the story and is especially effective when the nefarious entity returns and the ensuing events rely heavily on the understanding of the setting for a greater narrative impact. The ways she describes the motel and the rides and the candy shop in a very nostalgic way make you feel almost upset to see bad things go down there. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, I simply mean, because of the work that was done to set these things up, you actually care that some not so good things are happening, and caring is good. Caring is very good.
I really also enjoyed the movie nerd banter between a couple of Lia’s band members. I definitely relate to that kind geekishness, big time. And, overall, Codie Crowley does a great job of capturing the essence of that specific mix of nostalgia and slight sleaze that Wildwood is known for. The sleaze factor comes mainly from the shoobies (look it up) that the poor locals have to deal with year after year. So, I get it. Many details in the book took me back to those few summers I spent doing things I’d rather not say with people I’d rather not name. Anyway, good times!
There were a couple of issues that personally dragged the story down a bit for me. Mainly, this book is super horny. SUPER horny. That in itself is not a bad thing and you’d have to expect this is what you’d be getting in order to make the double entendre of the book’s title work. For me, it’s the fact that we’re dealing with high school kids. It just didn’t feel great to focus this much on sex and sex as a sport, in this case, when the story is about high school kids. I think, had the characters been written as college aged kids, the hypersexuality of the book wouldn’t feel so icky.
On that topic, Sundae especially is written as a hypersexual person. I assumed there would be something in the book that would shed some light onto why that was, but there wasn’t. In real life, I understand no one is owed an explanation of someone else’s sexuality but, for a fictional character, yeah, I’d kinda like to know what makes them tick, especially when such a specific trait is pushed so far forward. I think giving a bit of context to that dominant trait could have made Sundae a more fully realized character.
The humor in the story was a bit of a double edged sword for me. There were quite a few moments where the jokes landed really well. There were other times, especially later in the story when the humor felt a bit out of place in relation to the seriousness of the events unfolding. I think a slightly more serious approach would have made a big difference in really selling the stakes.
BODY COUNT suffers from some tonal issues and sexual elements that feel as though the story should have been aimed at a more mature audience. But the core of the story and dialog are both very solid. Codie Crowley has some pretty deft literary chops, I must say. I’d love to see what she could do with a more serious-minded story that leans into the sensibilities of an older audience.
