This book is more for fans of the movie Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 than it is for a casual reader, or even someone interested in movie tie-ins of a more postmodern type. To author D. A. Stern's credit, the book does provide the characters of Blair Witch 2 with more textured backstories than they receive in the movie. However, only one of the characters, Jeffrey Patterson, is really enriched. If I had to pick a protagonist for the movie, it'd be Jeff, but it's close; the film is actually a rather well-constructed ensemble piece, at least in terms of screen time. Unfortunately, you wouldn't know that from the book. We get glimpses of Kim's upbringing and Tristen and Stephen's troubled personal and professional lives together, but Erica is all but ignored. Instead, we are given a too-lengthy story about turn of the century X-Files type characters. It was probably fun to write, and its inclusion is a good idea in theory, but it fouls the flow of the book.

Even taking those objections into account, there's enough to keep those who are interested in the film going. The newspaper clippings are realistic (even if I would have preferred the photos in the book to be of the "real" people in Shadow of the Blair Witch and not from the actors in Blair Witch 2), and accounts of Jeff Patterson's time in a mental hospital--not to mention chilling drawings done by him as a child--are nicely detailed. The best part of the book is probably Tristen's diary, in which she confirms the distrust for Stephen that the little glances and half-muttered statements hinted to the attentive viewer of Blair Witch 2.