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haileyhardcover's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
I clearly didn’t enjoy this book much… BUT before I get into what I didn’t like, I want to mention what WAS good about it and that’s the criticism of the lack of positive Black representation the horror genre. From the setting of most Black horror films, the extra Z’s in titles, Black characters cast as the ”loyal sidekick” only there to sacrifice themself for the white lead, and the lack of a Black ”Final Girl” - racism is everywhere, and it’s blatant in horror.
Also, a murderous clown who draws the line at misgendering someone he’s about to kill. 🤡 Talk, Valentina!
No but really… Unfortunately, this was a really good premise and really disappointing execution. The writing isn’t great, none of the characters are likable, the layout of the setting is confusing, the ”twist” was obvious & unoriginal, and the addition of the romance felt forced and was completely unnecessary.
The first quarter of the book is slow and instead of making me care about these kids who are about to be slaughtered, I just grew increasingly annoyed with them. No one deserves to be murdered, BUT… it’s hard to root for a bunch of rotten, entitled, mega rich kids and a final girl who’s obsessed with everyone at her party being rich and famous and name dropping all of the designer things she owns… If she mentioned the fucking Birkin one more time I was going to scream! Also, was THAT detail really necessary? IYKYK.
Noelle repeats over and over AND OVER AND OVER that she’s got what it takes to be a Final Girl… but she repeatedly makes dumb choices that someone who has obsessively prepped for this kind of scenario (as she claims to have done) would never do. What kind of “there’s no way I’d die first,” final girl horror fanatic would ever make an entire group of drunk and high teenagers give up their phones to play hide and seek with a killer clown?! That detail ESPECIALLY made no sense considering she picked these specific people to attend her party because they’re all influencers with a large following and she wanted them to share things on their own socials so she could get more followers…
I could go on, but suffice to say that, unfortunately, I do not recommend this book. If you want a great YA slasher with a Black female MC, I highly suggest You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight instead!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Torture, Violence, Blood, Stalking, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Moderate: Gore, Racism, Excrement, Fire/Fire injury, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Drug use, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Grief, and Car accident
ninabest's review against another edition
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Death, Physical abuse, Racism, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Stalking, Car accident, Murder, Alcohol, and Classism
jamiee_f's review against another edition
dark
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
This book was a fun mash up of horror movie and book tropes. This book leans in to the absurdity of the horror premise, with our main girl being a burgeoning podcast host who runs an online movie club, who is throwing a halloween party for the ages and inviting all the coolest kids in school. They show up on a rainy night, each one ticking a different horror and/or social justice trope. She's planned everything to a tee, down to hiring an IT like clown to play hide and seek at her parents' mansion. However, things don't quite go as planned when the clown immediately, actually kills someone. Uh oh! This could be a fun premise, it's loaded with pop culture references and felt very of the moment; it's clearly written by someone with a deep grasp of online culture.
That said, there were a lot of things about this book that disappointed me too.The ending was such a flop, it felt like right wing propaganda about what they think leftists believe. The book touches on a lot of themes around privilege and intersectionality, and it's revealed one by one that the kids at this party have all done some bad shit. However, not all of them have done the same level of bad things. One ran a bitcoin scam, and our main protagonist bribed someone for a summer internship.
I couldn't tell if our author wanted us to sympathize with the characters or hate them--some of them were clearly bad people, and some were more morally gray. There was a scene in the middle where our main girl and her love interest sort of confess their sins to each other and then comfort each other about how it's not really their fault? which felt....pointless and mad me like them less. Like, people are dying. Is now the time?
The big twist is that the killer clown is working with one of the partygoers, a rich white boy podcaster who has been cut off by his parents, so he's mad at his friends who are still rich and agreed to help this ANARCHIST CLOWN kill a bunch of rich kids. the murderer's motive is garbled and illogical, and seemed like a MAGA interpretation of how socialists think. The final show down was some clever thinking by our final girl, but they literally are fighting on a rooftop in the rain, and she's telling him to check his privilege. Come on!!!
Other things that bothered me about this book:
That said, there were a lot of things about this book that disappointed me too.
I couldn't tell if our author wanted us to sympathize with the characters or hate them--some of them were clearly bad people, and some were more morally gray. There was a scene in the middle where our main girl and her love interest sort of confess their sins to each other and then comfort each other about how it's not really their fault? which felt....pointless and mad me like them less. Like, people are dying. Is now the time?
The big twist is that the killer clown is working with one of the partygoers, a rich white boy podcaster who has been cut off by his parents, so he's mad at his friends who are still rich and agreed to help this ANARCHIST CLOWN kill a bunch of rich kids. the murderer's motive is garbled and illogical, and seemed like a MAGA interpretation of how socialists think. The final show down was some clever thinking by our final girl, but they literally are fighting on a rooftop in the rain, and she's telling him to check his privilege. Come on!!!
Other things that bothered me about this book:
where the fuck did the pirahnnas come from -
why was the clown unkillable -
how did the clown have so much firepower and bombs -
the whole shitting in the birkin scene -
the way our main girl was so upset about the birkin -
why were some of the deaths unbelievably brutal, like the activist girl having to eat keyboard letters and glue, and some just like "bang your dead." deeply inconsistent! -
the poor neighbor dying for no reason -
the utter lack of meaningful motivation for the murders. Make him jealous or something!! -
a total disregard for how long things take, this whole book happens in the span of like 6 hours -
The main girl's hyperfocus on maintaining her alibi, which...okay yeah the cops are not likely to believe a Black girl, but there's also like 5+ other people who can verify your story? and you're rich AF? -
How the therapist tied into this at all? felt unnecessary -
originally I was willing to suspend disbelief about all these rich kids, but by the end I was over it, nothing made sense
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Drug use, Gore, Violence, Blood, Stalking, Murder, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
parasolcrafter's review
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
0.5
oh, this book was an ENTIRE mess. it was like a D-list indie horror movie as a novel in the worst possible way. oh my god.
the set-up is fairly standard and boring - a group of teenagers getting locked up inside a mansion with a crazed killer is hardly the most unique or interesting preface - which failed on every level of making it a good read.
first off: the characters are some of the most annoying, privileged brats you could ever meet, which is quite unfortunately the point of their characters. they are - with few exceptions - wholly unlikable; the scant few i liked were only the least annoying of the bunch, and the last remaining are characters we hardly met before they died so i dont have much of an opinion on them. everyone was also very, VERY one dimensional.
second: the killer, gage the clown. he was like an unholy mix of a demonic mary poppins (where did he continue to pull murder weapons from???) and a kind of god, capable of being everywhere and nowhere all at once. even with the 'twist' (i use that as lightly as possible as it was the most obvious part of the book) it didnt make his character make sense. like a killer clown is standard enough for bottom-of-the-barrel horror like this, but for him to be as omnipresent as he was is just ridiculous. the beginning and first few kills werent that far fetched - slicing and stabbing and using garden tools are all boring and predictable but make sense - but after that it just gets downright silly. like, how did he get a miniature horse into the house? how did he possibly have hundreds of mice at his disposal? he also somehow had bear traps? none of the later kills made any sense and truly took me out of the book; it was comical, and i know it wasnt meant to be. the neighbours death was also strange; he just had a bomb he could manage to somehow wire through the doorbell that would explode under her? sure. why the fuck not. not to mention the biometric padlocks he uses to close the doors...oh my god. things really were written to just be as absurd as possible with no real rhyme or reason: it was ridiculous to be ridiculous, not to be interesting.
third: the story, or lack thereof. i truly understand what the author was trying to get across, but my god did it fail. the main character, noelle, is one of the most useless protagonists in a horror book ive ever experienced. for someone who CONSTANTLY mentions how shes the ultimate 'Final Girl' she constantly fails at every turn (also, if you constantly need to say how good of a final girl you are, youre NOT as good as you are). like i understand she must be panicked and stressed beyond belief in this situation, but she fumbles so many situations in the end its pathetic. the end bit was especially bad, when she leaves a knife on the bookcase NEAR THE CLOWN??? at that point i mentally checked out and sped through the book as fast as i could; it was so, so horrible. the 'plot' was shoehorned so forcefully into the story that it was clear the author just had things she needed to say and she didnt care about working it into the story craftfully. i agree that the horror genre especially needs more diversity in its leads and a Black female lead was something i was really interested in reading, but this book failed on every front. its not a worthwhile addition to the genre it tried so hardly to emulate. its hardly horror - the mishandling of EVERYTHING by the characters is more stupidity than scary and the clown was, as i stated previously, ridiculous - and even its slasher elements are just shoddily written gore with a thin veil of a 'got'cha!' over it. noelle only stays alive because the author kept her alive, not because she did anything in the story to protect herself.
fourth: this story falls into the predicament of 'im not the killer, im BETTER than that trope'. like...please. by the end of the book, gage has killed nearly everyone in the house; it wouldnt be murder if anyone killed him, it would be self-defense. besides this:NOELLE ENDS UP KILLING HIM ANYWAYS. there were multiple options to have killed gage throughout the book (the one that sticks out is when they use his thumbprints on the locks to try and get out; they had a knife. it would have been SO EASY to kill him then and get out.) and they just...dont? like the alternative is that YOU die!
fifth: the killers reasoning is absolute and utter bullshit that holds no water. you mean to tell me he did all that because theyre rich and privileged??? it just seems as though the author couldnt get a good enough reason for this whole mess and picked the easiest one she could.
another thing: the motivation to not leave because it's 'raining and cold and they cold get hypothermia :(((' is just so flimsy of a reason. they were literally IN A MANSION. raid some closets, put on as many layers as you can handle, and leave. there is absolutely NO possible way the house was as locked down as it ended up being in the beginning; as is evidenced by the fact that they ended up outside more than once. it would have been hard, yes, but not impossible.
last nitpick: why were charlie and maddie introduced as dating, then later in the book only referred to as friends? i realize thats something thats very small in comparison to the rest of the story, but it baffled me. why isnt that something that was kept straight???
overall, dont waste your time on this book. its not worth it, at ALL.
the set-up is fairly standard and boring - a group of teenagers getting locked up inside a mansion with a crazed killer is hardly the most unique or interesting preface - which failed on every level of making it a good read.
first off: the characters are some of the most annoying, privileged brats you could ever meet, which is quite unfortunately the point of their characters. they are - with few exceptions - wholly unlikable; the scant few i liked were only the least annoying of the bunch, and the last remaining are characters we hardly met before they died so i dont have much of an opinion on them. everyone was also very, VERY one dimensional.
second: the killer, gage the clown. he was like an unholy mix of a demonic mary poppins (where did he continue to pull murder weapons from???) and a kind of god, capable of being everywhere and nowhere all at once. even with the 'twist' (i use that as lightly as possible as it was the most obvious part of the book) it didnt make his character make sense. like a killer clown is standard enough for bottom-of-the-barrel horror like this, but for him to be as omnipresent as he was is just ridiculous. the beginning and first few kills werent that far fetched - slicing and stabbing and using garden tools are all boring and predictable but make sense - but after that it just gets downright silly. like, how did he get a miniature horse into the house? how did he possibly have hundreds of mice at his disposal? he also somehow had bear traps? none of the later kills made any sense and truly took me out of the book; it was comical, and i know it wasnt meant to be. the neighbours death was also strange; he just had a bomb he could manage to somehow wire through the doorbell that would explode under her? sure. why the fuck not. not to mention the biometric padlocks he uses to close the doors...oh my god. things really were written to just be as absurd as possible with no real rhyme or reason: it was ridiculous to be ridiculous, not to be interesting.
third: the story, or lack thereof. i truly understand what the author was trying to get across, but my god did it fail. the main character, noelle, is one of the most useless protagonists in a horror book ive ever experienced. for someone who CONSTANTLY mentions how shes the ultimate 'Final Girl' she constantly fails at every turn (also, if you constantly need to say how good of a final girl you are, youre NOT as good as you are). like i understand she must be panicked and stressed beyond belief in this situation, but she fumbles so many situations in the end its pathetic. the end bit was especially bad, when she leaves a knife on the bookcase NEAR THE CLOWN??? at that point i mentally checked out and sped through the book as fast as i could; it was so, so horrible. the 'plot' was shoehorned so forcefully into the story that it was clear the author just had things she needed to say and she didnt care about working it into the story craftfully. i agree that the horror genre especially needs more diversity in its leads and a Black female lead was something i was really interested in reading, but this book failed on every front. its not a worthwhile addition to the genre it tried so hardly to emulate. its hardly horror - the mishandling of EVERYTHING by the characters is more stupidity than scary and the clown was, as i stated previously, ridiculous - and even its slasher elements are just shoddily written gore with a thin veil of a 'got'cha!' over it. noelle only stays alive because the author kept her alive, not because she did anything in the story to protect herself.
fourth: this story falls into the predicament of 'im not the killer, im BETTER than that trope'. like...please. by the end of the book, gage has killed nearly everyone in the house; it wouldnt be murder if anyone killed him, it would be self-defense. besides this:
fifth: the killers reasoning is absolute and utter bullshit that holds no water. you mean to tell me he did all that because theyre rich and privileged??? it just seems as though the author couldnt get a good enough reason for this whole mess and picked the easiest one she could.
another thing: the motivation to not leave because it's 'raining and cold and they cold get hypothermia :(((' is just so flimsy of a reason. they were literally IN A MANSION. raid some closets, put on as many layers as you can handle, and leave. there is absolutely NO possible way the house was as locked down as it ended up being in the beginning; as is evidenced by the fact that they ended up outside more than once. it would have been hard, yes, but not impossible.
last nitpick: why were charlie and maddie introduced as dating, then later in the book only referred to as friends? i realize thats something thats very small in comparison to the rest of the story, but it baffled me. why isnt that something that was kept straight???
overall, dont waste your time on this book. its not worth it, at ALL.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gore, Physical abuse, Racism, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Grief, Stalking, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Moderate: Drug use
Minor: Animal cruelty and Animal death
ghostlyprince's review
dark
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Child death, Death, Gore, Torture, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Stalking, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Moderate: Animal death, Confinement, Drug use, Infidelity, Misogyny, Sexism, Grief, and Alcohol
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Racism, Toxic relationship, Trafficking, and Car accident
vixenreader's review
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
It’s a slog to get through for the middle section and there have been better movies that have done this lot. Still, there’s a lot of small perks, such as the leading lady, the horror movie trivia, and some commentary on wealth and shame.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Cursing, Death, Gore, Miscarriage, Racism, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Medical trauma, Car accident, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Moderate: Bullying, Mental illness, Misogyny, Sexism, Vomit, Medical content, Kidnapping, and Toxic friendship
Minor: Animal cruelty, Toxic relationship, Fire/Fire injury, and Cultural appropriation
Be aware that there is violence with knives and other household items, bribery, financial stress, and homemade bombs.puddleshoes's review
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Physical abuse, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Stalking, Car accident, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
caseythereader's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Murder, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Minor: Racism
ktdakotareads's review
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Torture, Violence, Blood, Murder, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Moderate: Racism
adiajamille's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
It was pretty good. Maybe a bit too long. I was less than halfway and I was wondering how much more there’d be to tell. It also felt very basic and didn’t stray too much from traditional horror tropes. So it was solid in achieving the expected. And it was engaging enough that I wanted to finish. There was something off that I can’t put my finger on though. Maybe the weird identification of expensive items throughout. Maybe the teens felt too basic. I don’t know. It was good. But not great. And better than just ok.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Cursing, Death, Gore, Torture, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism