Reviews with content warning for Cursing - Wonderland

In a book where everyone’s a suspect it’s hard to know who to trust. In this case, that also includes the author. She strung me along with her cohesive writing style and great dialogue and tricked me into believing she had a grand plan for this story. She did not.

This whodunit kept me hooked ALMOST until the very end. Author Jennifer Hillier threw practically every curveball she had in her arsenal into the final five chapters, and it came out exceptionally underwhelming. However, for the first 85% Jennifer had me thoroughly inthralled with her very well written and engaging mystery. By the last 50 or so pages, I was more so anticipating the book to be over than to find out who was behind all of Seaside’s Wonder Workers disappearances.

I was left with a couple of questions by the end. Some of which that were technically answered in a “this was necessary for the purposes of helping the characters solve the crime” and not in a sensical, realistic, kind of way. The others weren’t even set up for you to be able to form your own conclusions; they were just left open. Definitely would have benefited from having a couple additional chapters to properly wrap things up if not a time jump epilogue.

Some characters were given back/side stories that offered absolutely nothing to the plot or to the character’s development. Oscar and his restaurant. Vanessa having an affair and murdering her husband. A security guard who killed his mother. Hovey and his gambling and porn addictions, to name a few.

The relationships evolved entirely too quickly and ended just the same. Most of those scenes felt like rough drafts. The instantaneous development between Vanessa and Tanner whose feelings for one another evolved “off screen”, and after only one interaction, was crazy. Not to mention the love octagon that involved everyone being infatuated with the “Dragon Lady” Bianca, for seemingly no reason whatsoever. Fourteen year old Ava and eighteen year old Xander? Vanessa and oozing red flags Oscar?

There is also a scene where a security guard attempts to rape a fourteen year old Ava, which was only a means to get said girl into the underground tunnel so that she can discover the hostages. This, amongst many other things toward the end of the book, inevitably led me to change my initial four star rating into a two.

I would recommend this book to someone who is into murder-mystery and not so much horror/thriller. There were no jump scares or gore. The dialogue between most of the characters felt natural despite all the pop culture references. You genuinely won’t know who the villain is until the end, because you can’t trust anyone throughout the book. Lastly, this book is good as a buddy read to be able to share your predictions and bounce your theories off of someone else.

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sabrina93's review

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-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

I gave this book 3 stars. Here's the thing, I love detective stories. I love watching detectives come to a new town and try to gain the townspeople's trust. This woman cared about the missing boys as soon as she heard about them. Vanessa was a great character and a great detective. She was honestly my favorite character other than the mechanic dad we meet later. She was able to gain the respect of the townspeople and she kept her promises to help them find out what happened to their kids. She was quick to point out the bias that the higher-ups had for the park and its employees. She got pissed when she found out that there was hardly any investigation involved with the boys who went missing. And that everything was covered up. Vanessa dealt with the deception and corruption of this town like a pro, in my opinion.

But there was a lot that I didn't like about this book. First, I hate the trope where the main character sleeps with a guy and it turned out he was one of the "bad guys" all along. No, Oz wasn't the main big bad, but he was part of the cover and he deserved to go to prison. I was ok with Oz and Vanessa being together at first, but the more I learned about Oz, the more I thought (or wished) that he would go away. He wasn’t a good person and he cared more about hitting on a detective than finding out what happened with the missing boys. I’m also confused with the fact that Vanessa sleeping with one of the suspects never came up with the chief of police.

As a matter of fact, the chief of police in this book was all-around bad. If you know one of your officers slept with one of the suspects that she working on, it doesn't matter if she's the head of the department or not, realistically, she should have been taken off the case. Or at the very least, given a warning. That’s called a conflict of interest. and the whole department should have known they slept together because Bianca tried to use Oz as her alibi, even though Oz was with Vanessa. Vanessa knew she was lying because they were together. It’s not like Vanessa can hide that fact from the other officers. Also, when the chief's son was taken into custody by Vanessa, we never get any reaction from the chief. He never talks to Vanessa about arresting his son. The son just gets out on bail and we never hear about him or the girl he beat up again. What was the point of that storyline? The way the police force acts in this story isn't very realistic at all.

Another detective trope that I hate is that the one person the main character trusts turned out the be the bad guy all along. I hated that it was Donnie. More so, I hate that it should have been obvious to me from the beginning. He was kind to Vanessa from the start and was the only one in the station who gave her a warm welcome. But him being the one who kidnapped the boys makes sense because Blake said it would be days in between getting food. So it should have been obvious to me that the kidnapper probably wasn’t someone who worked at the park. Donnie would’ve had to sneak into the park after hours, and he wouldn’t have been able to do that often because he works overtime as a police officer. I just didn't like that it was Donnie that was the bad guy. It felt too much like a copout.

I also thought the ending was messy. Because yes, Vanessa was able to figure out it was Donnie in the end. But she wouldn't have known where Blake was or even that he was alive without Ava's help. And Ava wouldn't have known where Blake was either if it hadn't been for the weirdo who attacked her and chased her into the dungeons. Blake was found by accident because the daughter of the detective found him by accident when she was attacked randomly by another guy who had nothing to do with the missing boys. And then that dude got away!!! Like, what was that ending??? Also, I find it devastatingly annoying that Oz never investigated the dungeons at the park. Boys are going missing, and no one thinks to check the old dungeons under the clown house??? Oz was brave enough to drag Nick there after trying to cover up for Bianca, but he never thinks to check there for missing employees. It's like the dungeons were an old wives' tale even though the old owner was supposedly going to trial for what he did there. The dungeons had to be common knowledge if he was going to be going to court for his crimes. Why didn’t anyone think to check there?

Also, Donnie's reasoning for wanting to do all of this didn’t make sense. I swear Bianca, that dumb Dragon Lady, had this entire town wrapped around her little finger. I started to think that even the chief of police was sleeping with her. Donnie loved Bianca during his time at the park, and he was capturing the boys because at one point they were all close to her. Which is such a weird reason for a cop to turn into a kidnapper. His actions go against what Bianca wanted to a small extent. Banca hated it when the Wonder Boys left her, that's why she would dump them before it was time for them to move on to college or whatever. But by Donnie kidnapping them and putting them in the dungeon, he essentially wasn't doing anything to help Bianca because they were out of her life anyway. Plus, they were alive. I don't know, Donnie's reasoning and how he went around showing his love for Bianca didn't make any sense. What makes even less sense is that if Bianca knew what Donnie was doing (it was hinted that she knew to an extent) it still wouldn't make sense because she shouldn't have felt suicidal or abandoned because the boys were still in the park.

I also hated the fact that while the old owner of the park was described by all as creepy, disgusting, and a child abuser, Bianca, who was also sleeping with the employees, was rarely spoken about. Yes, the situations were different because the old owner used drugs and alcohol to abuse the kids and Bianca just use her charms and special privilege to get the boys to come to her. But still, it was creepy. And not even Oz tried to stop her from doing it. Like gross.

I liked that Nick was alive. But it was a bit weird that he survived. Of all the places Oz could have taken him, it was the place where he was abused by the old owner to whom he took the body to. I still can't believe he would do it for Bianca though. And the reason that Donnie kept him alive even after all those years is weird too. The only reason Donnie left Nick alive is because of his connection with Bianca. But Bianca wanted Nick to die so it makes no sense for Donnie to want to go against Bianca's wishes to keep him alive.

I didn't like that Vanessa killed her husband. She was having issues with her husband because of his mental instability and instead of trying to get him to go to therapy, she decided to cheat on him with a drug dealer. And, of course, the person who helped her cover it up was the mayor of the town (at least I think he was). And of course, the mayor was the one who got Vanessa the new job as head of the detective department in the first place. Sketchy. I thought that the whole storyline was unnecessary and didn't bring anything to the plot other than making things difficult between Vanessa and her daughter.

My last complaint is Blake. I think Blake was the POV that I liked the most after Vanessa's because we got to see from the perspective of one of the victims. We don't know if he ended up surviving or not. The whole point for me finishing the book was to see if the victim would survive. That's the whole point of reading these crime books where time is of the essence. In books where we, the readers, know that the victim is alive and the detective doesn't means that we know that the survival rate of the victim goes down with each day. Time is ticking, and we know that every decision Vanessa makes directly affects Blakes's chances for survival. And in the end, it didn't matter, because Vanessa finds out that Blake was alive after he was found by her daughter. We know he went to the hospital, but we don't know if he survived the gunshot. For me, knowing if Blake survived or not was the whole point of finishing the book and we don't even get that answer. So what was the point of the book and having Blake's POV???

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rebecca_self's review

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4.0

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goodgollymissmollee's review

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2.75

The premise of this sounded really interesting to me. Carnivals, circuses, amusement parks are all settings i really enjoy. However, this book…. Was not it. The majority of the plot points revolves around an older woman taking advantage of teenage boys (18, but still wildly inappropriate since there was a power dynamic) but then they a full on 18yo man kiss one of our main characters who is FOURTEEN. And it’s not portrayed as predatory or problematic. Like yeah he says “you’re too young, I forgot” after the kiss but it’s just glossed over???? Like okay gross.

There’s also some very uncomfortably worded sex scenes that were minor infractions but still bothered me and grossed me out.

And I’m mad at the reveal cause the villain was the only character I actually liked.

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mysterymom40's review

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dark mysterious 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

2.25

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techno_mystic's review

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medium-paced

3.0

It sounds like it should be a dark and menacing story but it's pretty cheesy and lightweight really.

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