Horseman : A Tale of Sleepy Hollow

“There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land.” – The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

The Horseman is not a re-telling of Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow but a tale which takes place twenty years after the events of that book. Those who live in Sleepy Hollow know about the Horseman, but they don’t believe in his existence. Ben Van Brunt’s grandfather, Brom Bones was there when Crane was chased out of town. He will tell you it’s just a legend. Nothing to concern yourself with.

Ben Van Brunt, born a female declared “No one was ever going to make me be a female…. Once I was old enough, I was going to cut my hair and run away and be a man in some place where no one had ever heard of me.” Ben loves his grandfather more than anything and wants to grow up and be the man that Brom is. Ben is brave, he is strong, and big for his age. He is the target for some in town but proves time and time again that the Van Brunt’s are not to be messed with.

When Ben and a close friend come across the body of a headless child near their village, Ben begins to question everything the adults in Sleepy Hollow have ever said. Is the Horseman real? Is there something more sinister in the woods?

“Sleepy Hollow strange things were true, and sometimes those strange things reached out their claws. If wasn’t that people didn’t care; it was that they accepted horror in exchange for wonder.”

Those in town would tell you to watch where you go in the woods. To beware a certain area. There is a magic there, something that haunts the far woods. If you are quiet, if you listen closely, you can hear the whispers. Be still, and you can almost feel the invisible hands reaching out to grab you. There is a part of the Hollow that no one dares enter. You wouldn’t want to lose your head, would you?

“But the woods near Sleepy Hollow were not the same as other woods. There were places deep and dark that no one dared go. No one dared go there because it was known that those places were the haunts of creatures not of this earth. To go there was to invite their notice, and these were not things that you wanted to notice you.”

I loved this dark tale that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I could hear the horses thundering hooves. I could feel the tingles up my spine. There is an urgent sense of danger, dread, and doom in this book. Horseman: A Tale of Sleepy Hollow has a dark and sinister feel to it. The atmosphere brings forth feelings of fall, cooler nights and darker skies.

But this book is not all scary. Sure, there are some chilling and dreadful scenes. But this book is also about family, about loving someone, about being true to yourself, about acceptance, about bravery and friendship. That is what makes this book even more powerful – the relationships of Ben, Katrina and Brom. It’s quite lovely to read their scenes and be witness to their love, to root for them, to be moved by them.

This book was a five-star read for me for most of the book but it lost me a little toward the end. Mainly because it slows down slightly and felt a little stretched out before another major scene occurred at the end. Having said that, this was such a great book. Those silent hands reached out and grabbed me pulling me into the pages of this book.

Gripping, dark, tense and oh so deliciously wicked!

Thank you to Berkley Books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

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