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This plot could have worked, but the characters were the downfall.
Piper boasts about her obsession with thriller, suspense, and mystery movies and TV shows. She wants to work in the criminal justice field after college. Her and her best friend Hazel decide to solve the mystery of the missing teens in their town with their zero sleuthing and common sense skills. In the process, Piper gains the attention of the hottest guy in town, Caleb, who is a college boy (or maybe graduate?) when he looks at her in a cafe. Later that evening he appears at the lake (where the high schoolers hang out), catching her off guard and flirting with her. From one ID addict to another, this would raise red flags. She's known this guy for years and he's never given her the time of day. Why all of a sudden is he interested in her now?
So Piper's crush and lack of brain cells allow Caleb and his friend Owen to give her and Hazel a ride home except they're actually the ones abducting teens and locking them in a renovated building in the middle of the woods. Upon meeting four other missing teens, they clarify that Piper and Hazel have been mislead. They're trapped in a fun house with Caleb and his friends randomly torturing their subjects with water, sound, light, temperature, sleep deprivation, and fighting to the death.
The conflicts and twists were predictable, but Piper's impetuous and idiotic decisions were frustrating. The martial artist and ID addict in me kept track of everything wrong they were doing when they had chances to escape (despite the original option of ignoring the random attention of an older guy) and the lack of them wanting to fight. Anything can be used as a weapon. Why didn't they refuse to exit the room whenever they were buzzed over the loudspeaker and then wait for someone to check on them and then throw the TV at them? Or the microwave? Or chairs?
The final pet peeve was the ending. What kind of ending was that? It's like the ARC was left unfinished or cut off in the middle of a scene. It would have been more powerful if Piper had been an unreliable narrator from the start and then ending as she grabbed Evan's hand and smirked, letting the audience know she was on the opposing side all along.
Thanks Edelweiss for the ARC.
Piper boasts about her obsession with thriller, suspense, and mystery movies and TV shows. She wants to work in the criminal justice field after college. Her and her best friend Hazel decide to solve the mystery of the missing teens in their town with their zero sleuthing and common sense skills. In the process, Piper gains the attention of the hottest guy in town, Caleb, who is a college boy (or maybe graduate?) when he looks at her in a cafe. Later that evening he appears at the lake (where the high schoolers hang out), catching her off guard and flirting with her. From one ID addict to another, this would raise red flags. She's known this guy for years and he's never given her the time of day. Why all of a sudden is he interested in her now?
So Piper's crush and lack of brain cells allow Caleb and his friend Owen to give her and Hazel a ride home except they're actually the ones abducting teens and locking them in a renovated building in the middle of the woods. Upon meeting four other missing teens, they clarify that Piper and Hazel have been mislead. They're trapped in a fun house with Caleb and his friends randomly torturing their subjects with water, sound, light, temperature, sleep deprivation, and fighting to the death.
The conflicts and twists were predictable, but Piper's impetuous and idiotic decisions were frustrating. The martial artist and ID addict in me kept track of everything wrong they were doing when they had chances to escape (despite the original option of ignoring the random attention of an older guy) and the lack of them wanting to fight. Anything can be used as a weapon. Why didn't they refuse to exit the room whenever they were buzzed over the loudspeaker and then wait for someone to check on them and then throw the TV at them? Or the microwave? Or chairs?
The final pet peeve was the ending. What kind of ending was that? It's like the ARC was left unfinished or cut off in the middle of a scene. It would have been more powerful if Piper had been an unreliable narrator from the start and then ending as she grabbed Evan's hand and smirked, letting the audience know she was on the opposing side all along.
Thanks Edelweiss for the ARC.