Tick Tock by Dean Koontz 📚 BOOK REVIEW

I listened to an audiobook version of Tick Tock on Audible.

Genre: Horror, fiction.

Publisher: Bantam

Originally published: January 1st, 1996

Pages: 340 (paperback)

Audiobook length: 9 hrs and 27 mins

Synopsis by the publisher:

Tommy Phan is a successful detective novelist living the American Dream in southern California. One evening he comes home to find a small rag doll on his doorstep. It’s a simple doll, covered entirely in white cloth, with crossed black stitches for the eyes and mouth, and another pair forming an X over the heart. Curious, he brings it inside.
That night Tommy hears an odd popping sound and looks up to see the stitches breaking over the doll’s heart. And in minutes the fabric of Tommy Phan’s reality will be torn apart. Something terrifying emerges from the pristine white cloth, something that will follow Tommy wherever he goes. Something that he can’t destroy. It wants Tommy’s life, and he doesn’t know why. He has only one ally, a beautiful, strangely intuitive waitress he meets by chance–or by a design far beyond his comprehension. He has too many questions, no answers, and very little time. Because the vicious and demonically clever doll has left this warning on Tommy’s computer screen:
“The deadline is dawn.”
Ticktock
Time is running out.

My thoughts:

Dean Koontz is an author who’s been on my radar for a long time, but for some reason, I haven’t gotten around to give his books a chance. That was until my good friend Alex talked about Tick Tock, and I found the premise to sound very much up my alley.

Wonderfully horrific with its Ragdoll that comes to life with what seems like a mission to kill Tommy Phan.

The whole story kicks into drive pretty quickly, and it didn’t take me long for the story to grab hold and take me along on its journey of horror and wonder. And the story took another interesting turn when the character Del was introduced into the whole mix. I found her to be brilliantly weird, but also the kind of open-minded person that gave depth to the whole story. Kudos to Koontz for introducing an absolutely wonderful female companion character.

I’ve come to find that the horror that I enjoy the most are the ones that focus more on the people in the stories, and what the monsters or the horrific setting makes those people do. Because it’s in the times of despair and fear that our true selves often gets a chance to come out and play, for good or bad.

The other thing that really made this into such an enjoyable read was the humor that’s present throughout the whole book.
It’s hard to review this story in much more detail without spoiling the plot. So, it’s fast-paced, funny, creepy, and stays true to the horror genre.

I highly recommend Tick Tock to the horror lovers out there!