As a horror movie fan I was pretty interested in reading this. The handful of movie references were cool but would have liked to see more (some really great movies were neglected!), and mostly 90s whereas a variety would have been great for comparison and really shown these kids to be true fans.
The mystery part was pretty good, lots of potential suspects to choose from. Cool use of foreshadowing- the seat belt, taking the cigarettes and burner phone, though then the killer's identity turned out not to be a big surprise because of all the clues planted. I was annoyed that it doesn't seem there will be consequences for the perpetrator, though with the open ending we don't know for sure.
Thing is I didn't really engage with any of the main characters. Alice in particular is naive and not terribly bright for supposedly knowing so much about this stuff. She spends more time drooling over Wes than anything for at least half of the story. There was several bits where it seemed the author was going for politically and socially correct that just felt out of place and unnecessary, plus some modern slang I needed to look up. I needed more horror and felt the gore was few and far between for a slasher book.
I realized after getting the book that it's Young Adult. I haven't read YA, maybe the reason for some of my issues- it's aimed at a younger audience. Fans of YA might get more out of it.
The mystery part was pretty good, lots of potential suspects to choose from. Cool use of foreshadowing- the seat belt, taking the cigarettes and burner phone, though then the killer's identity turned out not to be a big surprise because of all the clues planted. I was annoyed that it doesn't seem there will be consequences for the perpetrator, though with the open ending we don't know for sure.
Thing is I didn't really engage with any of the main characters. Alice in particular is naive and not terribly bright for supposedly knowing so much about this stuff. She spends more time drooling over Wes than anything for at least half of the story. There was several bits where it seemed the author was going for politically and socially correct that just felt out of place and unnecessary, plus some modern slang I needed to look up. I needed more horror and felt the gore was few and far between for a slasher book.
I realized after getting the book that it's Young Adult. I haven't read YA, maybe the reason for some of my issues- it's aimed at a younger audience. Fans of YA might get more out of it.