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A review by superspecs
Carnival Of Fear by J.G. Faherty
1.0
1.5 stars
Ugh, where do I even start. First lets talk about the good things. This book could have easily left out the carnival and the premise would have worked since 90% of it takes place in the carnival's haunted house attraction, but the set-up of the teens working their way through each of these themed rooms was fun and worked pretty well in it's execution. And despite not necessarily needing the Carnival theme, I did like the bits you got with the evil carnies. They were suitably gross and creepy.
And now, everything else. The characters were initially fun to read about even though they fell into every stereotypical caricatures of teens, but the farther into the book the more annoying they became. There was no depth or character growth. What you see is what you get and unfortunately what we got were sexist and racist stereotypes. Seriously, the asshole bully rapist was a black kid from the hood who spoke in AAVE (sort of) the entire time. And the only girl with any attitude was a "fiery" latinx girl who spoke in a random mix of English and Spanish.
And now let's talk about the sexism. An actual line from the book, "Even the girls put up more of a fight than you". At every turn the girls are depicted as needing protected. They never participate in planning, keeping watch, and almost never part of the fight unless they're being attacked. Every time one of the girls attempts to help in a situation one of the boys undermines her and the one time one of the girls is the one to figure out how to get out of a room, she has to sacrifice herself for everyone else.
And do I even need to discuss the vampire room? It was literally 50 pages of these kids being raped, one at a time. It was awful.
Ugh, where do I even start. First lets talk about the good things. This book could have easily left out the carnival and the premise would have worked since 90% of it takes place in the carnival's haunted house attraction, but the set-up of the teens working their way through each of these themed rooms was fun and worked pretty well in it's execution. And despite not necessarily needing the Carnival theme, I did like the bits you got with the evil carnies. They were suitably gross and creepy.
And now, everything else. The characters were initially fun to read about even though they fell into every stereotypical caricatures of teens, but the farther into the book the more annoying they became. There was no depth or character growth. What you see is what you get and unfortunately what we got were sexist and racist stereotypes. Seriously, the asshole bully rapist was a black kid from the hood who spoke in AAVE (sort of) the entire time. And the only girl with any attitude was a "fiery" latinx girl who spoke in a random mix of English and Spanish.
And now let's talk about the sexism. An actual line from the book, "Even the girls put up more of a fight than you". At every turn the girls are depicted as needing protected. They never participate in planning, keeping watch, and almost never part of the fight unless they're being attacked. Every time one of the girls attempts to help in a situation one of the boys undermines her and the one time one of the girls is the one to figure out how to get out of a room, she has to sacrifice herself for everyone else.
And do I even need to discuss the vampire room? It was literally 50 pages of these kids being raped, one at a time. It was awful.