My Two Cents: THEY LOOKED LIKE PEOPLE by K.E. Koontz

I love found footage horror movies. Books that emulate that style are a secret guilty pleasure, too. I should qualify these statements by adding "when done well," because anyone who enjoys found footage knows they can be really, really good or really, really bad. Like really bad.

"They Looked Like People" by K.E. Koontz definitely falls into the former category. It's a fantastic book, fast-paced, taut, and truly terrifying. Told from the perspective of a story within a story, it's the chronicle of a documentary film called 'Blackwater Pines: The Family that Left,' that investigates the mysterious disappearances of a trio of siblings--identical twins Bethany and Bailey Westpoint and their older brother Avi--in the Blackwater Canyon region of West Virginia. The twins vanished while hiking together, and Avi went missing shortly afterwards while searching for them. No evidence of what happened to any of the siblings has ever been found, except for a series of short, cryptic video messages Avi sent to his best friend, Caleb, on the night he vanished. In these, a distraught Avi is seen running through the dense woods, barefooted and only in his pajamas despite freezing temperatures and snow on the ground. He's calling out to someone or something in the woods that remains unseen and unheard, but that he insists is one or both of his missing sisters.

When official searches for Avi end with more questions than answers, Caleb turns to the paranormal investigative team behind a popular YouTube show, 'Strange and Bizarre' for help. The Strange and Bizarre team--pretty, perky Camilla; pragmatic Leslie; and cameraman Mike--agree to meet Caleb and follow him into the rugged forests of the Allegheny Mountains to search for clues into the Westpoint siblings' fates.

'Blackwater Pines: The Family that Left' documents that investigation, interviewing all three members of the Strange and Bizarre crew and utlizing footage they'd shot while traveling with Caleb, as well as a young woman named Sam, a friend of both Caleb and Avi, who had accompanied them.

Caleb is sure Avi's still alive, despite the fact the young man has been missing for more than a month in the stark wilderness in the dead of winter, with no supplies, coat, or even shoes. Caleb's determination to find him borders on desperation. Sam, on the other hand, believes Avi and the twins are dead and unlikely to be found. She's agreed to join in the Strange and Bizarre trek because she's worried about Caleb and hopes that through this endeavor, he'll find some semblance of closure.

What Caleb finds instead -- what they all find -- is something much darker, stranger, and far more chilling.

Koontz handles the complexities of this plot format expertly, jumping from the past to the present seamlessly, as well as from one character's perspective to another. She builds equally complex characters, each of whom is struggling to face ghosts from his or her respective pasts, some closer to the surface than others. As the team delves deeper into the woods, the tension and mystery mount, and with each new clue, each fragile splinter of hope they discover, that mystery only deepens.

At its heart, "They Looked Like People" is about grief and loss. Avi relentlessly searched for his sisters out of guilt and a misplaced sense of responsibility. Caleb searches for Avi for these exact same reasons. It's implied that there was more than friendship between Avi and Caleb, that Caleb's devotion to Avi extends well beyond what he's willing to admit aloud, and the reader spends much of the book wondering if that has driven Caleb to madness. Sam certainly thinks so, as do Leslie and Mike. Camilla is more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, if only because of inciting incidents in her own past that have led her to want to learn more about the supernatural.

Throughout the story, the landscape itself becomes as much a character as any of the cast or crew, with Koontz's wonderfully descriptive prose drawing you into the midst of this shadowy, liminal setting and leaving you truly unsettled. She captures the quiet, disconcerting stillness that being deep within the woods evokes, that primal fear that we are no longer the apex predators once out of our natural elements, and have, in fact, become prey.

This is dark and powerful stuff. Be prepared to stay up way too late, reading long into the night, then thinking about what you've read well after that. This is the kind of fiction that haunts you in all the best ways.

"They Looked Like People" is available here.