Book Review: Benny Rose, The Cannibal King

She raised the hammer again. Had he feared this moment...thinking he knew how tonight would go? No, they were only teenage girls. What could they do? He couldn't have foreseen what teenage girls could become.

Teenage girls could be demons.

 Hailey Piper's Benny Rose, The Cannibal King is a magnificent read for the Halloween season or any other time of year. It's a story of friendship and bravery and nightmares come to life.

Warning: SPOILERS

Desiree and her friends Jesse and Sierra are spending Halloween night at Gabrielle's place. Gabrielle is the new girl in town; she's moved in with her grandmother who lives in Blackwood, Vermont's Glade Street Retirement Community. Unfortunately for these girls, Glade Street Retirement Community has a secret. It turns out Blackwood's urban legend, the undead, child-eating cannibal, Benny Rose, is real. And Glade Street is his hunting ground.

The teenagers are soon attacked by Rose, and he is one of the most sinister villains I have read about in a while. I don't frighten easily, but Benny Rose gave me the creeps, an undead, naked, bone white creature - no longer a man - who moves quietly through the night.

But Benny isn't the only evil in Piper's novel. He may be the most obvious monster, but the old folks of the retirement community not only condone his presence, they support it. They not only cover up his crimes, they actively help him find his prey. These octogenarians don't like kids, and they're willing to feed them to Benny to keep their part of town teenager-free.

But like the quote at the top of my review says, teenage girls can be demons. And these girls aren't going to go down without a fight.

And, I think this is ultimately what the book is all about: how often people underestimate the young, and how often they underestimate women. Benny Rose is about how much stronger youth and women are than people realize. The amount of fight it takes to be a young woman in our society is something that older men, in particular, take for granted. Just look at the U.S. government: mostly run by older (white) men and doing so much damage to a world that they don't have to live in. Those in power are fine creating a world where women, people of color, the young, and the poor are forever being blocked from aid, from opportunity, from anything that will give us a voice or power. Those in power are also fine with destroying the planet, content to leave the problems they create for future generations to handle.

And as grim as Benny Rose ultimately is, it also reminds us that the disenfranchised still have power. Our heroines destroy the cannibal king. And if the neighborhood octogenarians thought they were going to get away clean, they might want to think again.

Those would be the most popular of all Blackwood's ghost stories. The more gruesome, the better. They were about all the awful things monsters did to children, but in the end the dead kids got their revenge, with open mouths and merciless teeth.

As the Millennium Generation and Gen Z come of age, things are changing. Yes, the world seems a dark, scary place right now. But we have the power to change it. This is the note of hope at the end of Piper's novel. The young and women and those of us who are silenced are stronger than we are given credit for. And it's about to be our turn to rule the world.