Book Review: The Harvest by Alex Hunter (2025)
I receive dozens of review requests from indie horror authors each month, and I’m pretty well convinced that this particular slush pile is an undocumented outer circle of hell. Here we have the guy who filled his elementary school notebooks with macabre doodles and decided they should be a book. Over there is Angry Incel Guy, who is very upset at women and thinks that serves as an ideal foundation for a horror novel. If you look over your shoulder, you might see a man who injects his own problematic political commentary into a book about teenagers (for the record, I get annoyed with anyone who does this, whether their politics are problematic or not). I’d just come off a flurry of these types of requests, so I was a bit hesitant when Alex Hunter followed up with me to see if I’d checked out his book yet. I’m pleased to report that it only took a few pages to put my concerns to rest, and throughout the entirety of Harvest, I found a lot to appreciate.
“Less a school and more of a prison…”
Tim Waverly, a schoolteacher desperately seeking to take the next step into adulthood and secure a mortgage in expensive London, enlists with a program that connects tenants with rent-free properties in need of stewardship. In Tim’s case, it’s the long-abandoned Fraser-Ruck School for Boys in Oldfield Court, a short distance from the secondary school where he teaches. Cavernous and in disrepair, the building immediately reveals strange impressions—often resembling elements of the human figure—along its walls, alongside the cryptic drawings and mementos of its former occupants. Soon, an elderly neighbor clues Tim into the building’s shadowy history, and strange occurrences begin to manifest in the homes of the other residents of Oldfield Court. Something ancient and evil stirs, seeking to consume those too near to its gate in the name of a dark reconciliation.
The Black of the Deep Ocean, The Blue of Midwinter
Hunter has a steady, almost classic style that at times reminds me a bit of Henry James: elegant and efficient, but not afraid of understatement or layered storylines. It makes it very easy to sink into his novel, and the plot of Harvest proved to have a surprising amount of depth—far more than what we typically see in popular fiction. I won’t spoil anything, but there’s a lot of detail in the backstory that we only glimpse, and I really appreciate that in an age where popular novels are often more style than substance.
That’s not to say it was all perfectly smooth. I do feel the early middle of the novel meandered a bit, zipping from character to character in a series of sub-chapters that almost feel too short or insubstantial to provide more than color to the story. I understand the need to build tension and strangeness in a story like this, but I think the novel occasionally falls into extended sequences where characters wield very little influence over what is going on, and plot almost outruns the characters.
Similarly, there were some details of the plot that felt like missed opportunities. A Ouija board plays a key role in escalating some of the dark experiences, and holy water is used as leverage against a villain who seems largely removed from Western religion. Now, it’s not to say these things aren’t allowed, but they feel a bit out of place in a story with so much original mythos. I understand their mechanical usage in the plot, but the inclusion of these very trope-y items feels like a bit of tarnish on an otherwise strong story.
To be sure: both of these criticisms are minor, and what Harvest and author Alex Hunter get right far outpaces what is askew.
I’ll wrap by saying that Harvest is solidly creepy, with some tense moments and an interesting villain who (mostly) plays his role well. The good guys—a multi-generational crew of well-developed, well-rounded archetypes—hang together naturally and provide a nice balance of viewpoints as the plot develops.
Final Thoughts
I had generally positive feelings about Harvest. It felt like a genuinely inspired, rather than constructed, work, and Alex Hunter’s prose is above par for popular fiction. The plot is satisfyingly ornate, even ambitious, though the pacing and structure of the novel don’t always explore it with the deftness it deserves. I think it would have benefited from a bit more focus and intention at the scene level, rather than cutting moment to moment in an effort to keep the plot moving forward. Both the novel and the writer are above grade for indie horror fiction, and the minor qualms I had with it likely won’t bother most people.
Score: 7.0
You might also like: IT, Coraline, Silent Hill, Adam Nevill
