A review by dans_bookscape
Sacrificial Waters by A.D. Jones

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is the second of A.D. Jones’ books I’ve read after his awesome debut, Umbrate. While it is wildly different from his debut it still maintains the quality and shows the versatility of the author to be able to jump to different genres.

Sacrificial Waters comes with a classic horror set up of a group of friends enjoying themselves, in this case exploring abandoned urban sites, but a chance find leads to a new area to explore that has deadly consequences for the group.

The group dynamics are key in Sacrificial Waters, the group are friends but mainly due to a shared passion which means whilst they can joke around and mess with each other which felt very natural, they don’t fully know each other, this in my opinion left the potential all the way through of a shock involvement coming from within.

The characters were well written in such a short period, it was so easy to feel attached to them individually and as a group.
 
There were two out of nowhere shocks, obviously this is a horror and there is going to be death and terror but I was genuinely surprised by what occurred at times. The book never lets the reader get comfortable and that works really well with horror stories.

Sacrificial Waters is an awesome horror story with the right level of scares, gore and humour. It has some twists that throw you and some genuine shocks.

Big thanks to A.D. Jones for the Advanced Reading Copy.