Kathryn Foxfield

Steven Kingish book about 10 teenagers who are all invited to an abandoned amusement park on an island off the coast of their town. Their invites all talk about having a secret and being guilty and while they are there a storm comes in and smashes the pier so they cannot get back to the mainland. Rumour has it that the park was run by a man who was possessed by an evil spirit in the shape of a clown and one by one the teens get stuck in this time warp where they drink alcohol and party at night and forget about their troubles and then wake up in the morning to discover one of their members is dead. How did they die? Why did they die? Is it because they confessed their deepest darkest secret the night before and the evil spirit only wants ONE of them? Ava is determined to hold onto her secret at all costs.
I started reading this thinking it was a murder mystery and the supernatural stuff was fake so had to switch thinking half way through the book and realise that it actually was all paranormal stuff happening like Stephen King's IT or other similar Horror books. This one is for mature audiences due to the swearing, drinking, drug use and sex, and of course the gruesome way the bodies keep popping back up to scare the remaining teens as they get picked off one by one.
Older students will probably like it better than I did.… (altro)

Lex is one of five teens who have signed up to be part of the newest (and possibly last) season of the reality TV show It's Behind You. The show's contestants must spend the night in a supposedly haunted location. Whoever is able to stay there the whole night wins 10 grand - and if multiple people manage to stick around, they have to split the 10 grand, so it's in contestants' best interests if there are fewer winners.

This season is taking place in the Umber Gorge Caves, the home of the Puckered Maiden, a ghost who takes the hearts of her victims. It's debatable whether she actually exists, but people have definitely died in these caves. The most recent death was only two years ago, a local teen killed during a cave-in.

Lex doesn't believe in ghosts and figures she'll get the 10 grand, easy. However, her fellow contestants - Python the YouTuber, Marla the wannabe actress, Abbie the ghost hunter, and Liam, the local boy who for some reason is pretending he isn't local - all have something they're hiding, and one of them may be willing to kill to keep others from finding out their secrets.

The cover makes this look like horror, right? I went into this expecting something like the movies Haunted Asylum and Grave Encounters - a group does a ghost hunting reality show that turns supernaturally deadly. Instead, this was more of a thriller/mystery that didn't really have anything in the way of creepy moments or scares.

I'd previously read Foxfield's Good Girls Die First and thought it was so-so. Although I liked this book about the same (or maybe a tiny bit more?), I felt that it did better by its characters, at least some of them. They weren't necessarily just "the annoying one" and "the jerk" all the way through, and I actually came to sort of like a couple of them.

The ending was, unfortunately, cartoonish to the point of reminding me of a Scooby-Doo episode. Also, although everything technically got resolved, the story felt more like it came to a stuttering halt than a satisfying close.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (altro)