This one has an interesting premise. Two college students hear about this part-time job being offered at a small rural community. They don't know much about it but assume it must be related to the harvest. The village is in an archipelago that can only be reached by plane. The job is only for a few weeks and expenses are covered, including food and shelter. Since they don't have anything better to do and money is money, they decide to accept the offer and check this whole thing out.
Already you can see this is sorta the Wicker Man situation and the first part of the novel plays a little bit like it, where the main characters go around getting to know more about this weird village in the middle of nowhere. The village elder explains to them that they will be performing pranks that look like hauntings around to scare people a little bit and put them in the mood for the Repose of the Soul festival that is coming up. If it were me I would catch a plane right back because that sounds quite illegal. Of course this can't happen, otherwise we wouldn't have a story, so they accept.
The second part becomes a monster story, a mix of big-foot thing with a touch of supernatural but we never get to see the monster. In fact we know very little about it and much of its nature is left to the reader's imagination. Some times it looks like it's a new type of animal, other times it looks like it's a demonic thing. There's a couple subplots in there involving monks, another student and the real intentions of the village elder but none of those are really explored. I guess the author might have planned this as a series but it never caught enough interest. This was released in 2016 and yet I have not found a single review of this LN anywhere. Sure it's your average horror pulp, not an amazing read but it doesn't deserve to be completely ignored, either. It could use some illustrations, too.
