Take a photo of a barcode or cover
Wow, this was way different than most of Darcy’s books! This one focused on a cult and was as well-written as all her books are. There were some shocks. It was a lot more gory than her books have ever been!! While she’s my favorite horror author, a lot of her books do lean more toward “light horror,” but this one was way more gruesome.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gore
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
2.5/5 stars. I truly wasn't sure what I wanted to rate this. I was between 2 or 3 stars and decided to round down.
The premise of this book is an influencer hosts a game on a secluded island and invites his fans to participate. One of the participants, our FMC named Ruth, is the lone survivor of a cult from her childhood. As the games unfold, everything starts to go wrong.
While I don't always love every Darcy Coates book that I read, she will always be one of my favorite authors to read and I won't stop reading her. This ended up being one of her books that I wasn't a huge fan of.
Normally I'm a pretty fast reader as I'm sure a lot of you have noticed, but this took me longer than usual to get through. I really struggled with the first half of this book. The first 55% of this book felt very slow to me and if this hadn't been an ARC, I would've considered DNFing it.
I found the games to be pretty underwhelming compared to what I was expecting. I guess I was expecting something more similar to Squid Games. The games ended up being more on the average side and I didn't find them too entertaining to read.
The other big miss for me were the characters and the structure. The characters felt bland to me. There were so many characters that I wasn't expecting all of them to be developed, but unfortunately even our main characters felt like they were leagues away from me. I didn't feel like I knew any of them except Ruth, and it was a very vague understanding to me. The other problem for me was how the structure was laid out. We were taken between present and past. When we went into the past, we learned bits about Ruth's time in her cult. But even what we learned felt incredibly surface level to me. I wanted to understand more about her cult but I feel as though we didn't learn much. We really just had a vague replay of her final moments within the cult when everything went wrong.
In an effort to keep this review spoiler free, I'm not going to be too detailed into what I say next. Some of the character's storylines felt too abrupt and didn't offer any sense of closure. There were two characters that I had wished we had more of an explanation for towards the end. Their deaths felt incomplete to me and even the epilogue didn't give me the closure that I was desperately hoping for.
What did end up working for me was the excitement and gore within the last half of the book. Around 60% and on, things really started to get amped up. There was a ton of gore, tension, and terror towards the end. While I felt that we had to wait a while for it to begin, it ended up really delivering when it did show up.
While this specific book ended up not being for me, I will still continue to read Darcy's books.
Some of my favorite Darcy Coates books:
Dead of Winter - 4 stars
Hunted - 5 stars
Craven Manor - 5 stars
The Carrow Haunt - 5 stars
From Below - 4 stars
Where He Can't Find You - 4 stars
Whispers in the Mist - 4 stars
Silence in the Shadows - 4 stars
Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
Goodreads Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7562903382
Fable Review: https://fable.co/review/519f0268-e37e-4644-a48d-cd2b97bac54a/share
The premise of this book is an influencer hosts a game on a secluded island and invites his fans to participate. One of the participants, our FMC named Ruth, is the lone survivor of a cult from her childhood. As the games unfold, everything starts to go wrong.
While I don't always love every Darcy Coates book that I read, she will always be one of my favorite authors to read and I won't stop reading her. This ended up being one of her books that I wasn't a huge fan of.
Normally I'm a pretty fast reader as I'm sure a lot of you have noticed, but this took me longer than usual to get through. I really struggled with the first half of this book. The first 55% of this book felt very slow to me and if this hadn't been an ARC, I would've considered DNFing it.
I found the games to be pretty underwhelming compared to what I was expecting. I guess I was expecting something more similar to Squid Games. The games ended up being more on the average side and I didn't find them too entertaining to read.
The other big miss for me were the characters and the structure. The characters felt bland to me. There were so many characters that I wasn't expecting all of them to be developed, but unfortunately even our main characters felt like they were leagues away from me. I didn't feel like I knew any of them except Ruth, and it was a very vague understanding to me. The other problem for me was how the structure was laid out. We were taken between present and past. When we went into the past, we learned bits about Ruth's time in her cult. But even what we learned felt incredibly surface level to me. I wanted to understand more about her cult but I feel as though we didn't learn much. We really just had a vague replay of her final moments within the cult when everything went wrong.
In an effort to keep this review spoiler free, I'm not going to be too detailed into what I say next. Some of the character's storylines felt too abrupt and didn't offer any sense of closure. There were two characters that I had wished we had more of an explanation for towards the end. Their deaths felt incomplete to me and even the epilogue didn't give me the closure that I was desperately hoping for.
What did end up working for me was the excitement and gore within the last half of the book. Around 60% and on, things really started to get amped up. There was a ton of gore, tension, and terror towards the end. While I felt that we had to wait a while for it to begin, it ended up really delivering when it did show up.
While this specific book ended up not being for me, I will still continue to read Darcy's books.
Some of my favorite Darcy Coates books:
Dead of Winter - 4 stars
Hunted - 5 stars
Craven Manor - 5 stars
The Carrow Haunt - 5 stars
From Below - 4 stars
Where He Can't Find You - 4 stars
Whispers in the Mist - 4 stars
Silence in the Shadows - 4 stars
Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the ARC. All opinions are my own.
Goodreads Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7562903382
Fable Review: https://fable.co/review/519f0268-e37e-4644-a48d-cd2b97bac54a/share
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Self harm, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Pedophilia
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Self harm, Violence, Blood, Cannibalism
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Violence
Moderate: Pedophilia