A review by mapscitiesandsongs
Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I am bit conflicted. On one hand it was extremely entertaining and I couldn't put the book down. On the other hand there were a lot of things I disliked. First of all, I didn't know it was a slasher book and had completely different expectations. But that's on me. The characters were a bit flat for my taste but I don't think you can expect to have characters with a lot of depth in this kind of book. But still, a lot of plot points didn't really work for me because the characters were so flat and there was zero explanation to their actions. During the whole book I had literally no idea who Cole was as a person and how his life has been up to that point.
Like yeah, his mother died and then his sister too. But what else? And his father was no different. The reasoning behind his need to kill his son is just so freaking stupid. He mentioned that he lost his son even before the death of his daughter, but what exactly happened? Was it because of the Youtube stuff or was is the generational thing?
Can't really say anything about Quinn. She felt like a side character and I didn't care what happened to her to be honest. The romance was just weird.
I wasn't on board with these romantic feelings or whatever between Quinn and Cole and then the author pulled a 180 and introduces a romance between Cole and Rust out of nowhere. I didn't see it coming at all and it just felt so forced.
My biggest problem were the villains and the whole reasoning behind the whole thing. It was just ridiculous and too forced/political. It felt like an agenda being pushed down my throat. I actually had to snort when I found out why the killings happened. It's laughable and flimsy at best. The villains were predictable, dumb and felt cartoonish. The ending made everything even worse though.
Saying 'Even if they killed everyone, they would have been caught regardless' just undid the entire thing. It was all pointless.



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