The Sacrifice Box

Our Review

The Sacrifice Box begins in the Summer of 82 and tells the story of five friends who come across an unusual box hidden in the woods. To show their commitment to their friendship the friends each decide to sacrifice something special to them into the box.

Each child agrees to certain rules: Never visit the box alone. Never visit at night and never take back your sacrifice.

Four years later and the friends have grown apart and no longer speak to each until terrifying events lead them to believe that one of them has broken the rules and they all must pay the consequences.

The Sacrifice Box is a cross between The Breakfast Club and a Stephen King novel. Originally it was a slow starter, but it quickly picked up pace and ended up being quite a good read.

Some elements of the book were scary, and some were less so, for example Barnaby was more reminiscent of Goosebumps for me than anything else. However, there were times when it was genuinely creepy.

When the book begins in 1982 Sep has enjoyed spending the summer with a group of friends he happened upon. He knows it will soon be over though and they will go back to their normal friends and he will go back to be a loner. In desperation Sep seizes on the idea of the sacrifice box to try and bond the group of friends to each other. Sep likes being friends with Mack, Arkle, Lamb and Hadley and doesn’t want them to leave him.

“Sep knelt beside the box. The Forest was tight with heat, and sweat prickled on his skin.

The clearing around him was a blanket of root and stone, caged by silent trees and speckled dark, leaf spinning pools that hid the wriggling things of the soil. And at its heart, as though dropped by an ebbing tide, was the sacrifice box.”

Sep’s friends each have their own sacrifice for the box, something of meaning to them. For Sep his chosen sacrifice is Barnaby his childhood teddy bear. The teddy bear used to be a source of comfort for him but when his mother was ill with cancer he loaned him to her whilst she was in hospital. Afterward, Barnaby was a reminded for them both of them of his mother’s illness. He is pleased to be rid of it.

“We’re doing this for each other whatever you sacrifice has to mean something.”

The rules of the box originally came to Sep in a waking dream and he passed them on to the others.

“They spoke the words – the rules of the sacrifice. ‘Never come to the box alone,’ they said, hands unmoving. ‘Never open it after dark’, they said, fingers joined together. ‘Never take back your sacrifice,’ they finished.”

Four years later Sep is excitedly filling out his application form to go to college on the mainland and escape the small town where he grew up. The adults in Sep’s life are all concerned about his lack of friends since that long -forgotten summer.

At school Sep is frequently bulled and called ‘septic’ by his schoolmates. On this particular day though Arkle stands up to the school bully for him and tells him that he and the others want to talk to him later.

Sep works in a chip shop after school for a man named Mario who is also the local vet. Mario is a source of comfort for Sep and clearly thinks highly of him.

Arkle and the others come to visit him in the chip shop and say they really need to talk to him. Strange things have been happening and they all suspect that someone has been breaking the rules of the sacrifice box.

Sep is sceptical until later that night when realises that his former friends are right and someone has broken the rules.

Little do they realise they are not the first ones to have encountered the box nor the first ones to have broken the rules. 

Our Final Rating...

Tue, 9th January 2018