Night of Madness / Ryan Douglass / Book Review
NIGHT OF MADNESS
Everybody knows Jack Stanley. He directed some of the best slasher films of the past few decades. The Jack Stanley cinematic universe is the end-all-be-all for all horror buffs out there. So when a competition is announced, one night of challenges inspired by his most terrifying psychological horror film Asylum, fans all over the country jump at the chance to win a spot to compete.
Mara needs to catch a lucky break, and if that means playing Jack Stanley's #1 Fan, so be it. She knows all his films, after all, thanks to her father's obsession with Stanley's campy slashers. She can play the part. She just needs to convince the fans. Because it's not as simple as presenting an audition tape or filling out an application. Jack Stanley's looking for rising influencers to thrust into his twisted limelight. And for Mara, that means doing a lot of work... and not all of it legal.
And Mara's creative solutions work. She finds herself in the roster of the lucky chosen few. She's one step closer to life-changing prize money. But the creepy facility that's been prepared just for them is rather more... complex than Mara imagined. And some of these made-for-TV tricks aren't feeling like tricks now that the cameras are rolling...
Mara needs to catch a lucky break, and if that means playing Jack Stanley's #1 Fan, so be it. She knows all his films, after all, thanks to her father's obsession with Stanley's campy slashers. She can play the part. She just needs to convince the fans. Because it's not as simple as presenting an audition tape or filling out an application. Jack Stanley's looking for rising influencers to thrust into his twisted limelight. And for Mara, that means doing a lot of work... and not all of it legal.
And Mara's creative solutions work. She finds herself in the roster of the lucky chosen few. She's one step closer to life-changing prize money. But the creepy facility that's been prepared just for them is rather more... complex than Mara imagined. And some of these made-for-TV tricks aren't feeling like tricks now that the cameras are rolling...
THOUGHTS
This is a book with a fun horror concept that unfortunately suffers from poor pacing and bad characterization. It takes too long to get to the good parts, and there isn't enough buy-in from the characters to make those good parts really good.
This is a book with a fun horror concept that unfortunately suffers from poor pacing and bad characterization. It takes too long to get to the good parts, and there isn't enough buy-in from the characters to make those good parts really good.
PROS
| Good Gore | Some readers beware, this book does have more gore than the average YA horror, which is somewhat contrary to what the synopsis would lead you to believe. So the squeamish should look away. But horror fans will like at least a few of the grisly scenes this book presents. It's a gruesome factory mixed with an asylum, so there are plenty of ways for bodies to get mangled... and processed. This book isn't exactly rife with gory details, but there are one or two blood-spattered scenes in this book that will hit just the right note for the true horror fans among us. |
| Fated Final Girl | You know how it goes. The unwitting cast of characters gets dragged into a horror scenario. One Final Girl drags herself back out at the end, the last (gore splattered) one standing. And this book plays right into that trope. These characters know what they're getting into (though they think it will be edited for TV, not really playing out). Mara especially is a horror aficionado, so she knows what to expect. And when it becomes clear early on that the show's crew is setting Mara up to be the Final Girl, well, the rest of the cast isn't happy... |
| Upended Ending | This book is set up with that classic Final Girl ending in mind. The show actually dictates it. So I was pleasantly surprised with the direction the ending actually takes. I won't spoil it, since we don't do spoilers here. But rest assured, if there's one thing this book succeeds at, it is subverting that expected ending. |
CONS
| The pacing in this book is... not good. A whole quarter of the book is spent on the audition process for this show, which is, frankly, too much of the book. But if the audition process had been structured differently, it might have worked. If we had really dug into Mara's home life, for example, and why she's so desperate to escape. Or we had really dwelled on her relationship with her best friend Storm, who is auditioning with her. Or if more creepy things happened as she forces herself to do more and more to get the attention of the fans who are determining her fate. These things could have worked, but we didn't get them. We just get some (minor spoiler) shoplifting and vague notions of her life being not what she wants it to be. Which isn't worth spending a whole quarter of the book on when the real meat here is what happens in the competition itself. | Poor Pacing |
| This book has a big problem with telling. I was always being told things. I was told Mara lives in the hood. I didn't get to experience living it (see above, about not really being in touch with why Mara's so desperate to escape). I was told what the asylum made Mara feel every time she entered a new room. I didn't get to feel it with her. I was told the way she processed the world around her. I didn't get to experience the world first hand. I kept being told crucial facts, told pivotal feelings, and handed startling revelations on a silver platter, and that's not good. But that's especially not good in a horror book, which is a particularly sensory-dependent genre. Good horror doesn't involve being told. It involves being right there, realizing right alongside the characters not because they've told you what they have realized but because you can't help but have the same revelation as you, too, experience sensory overload. And this book just doesn't provide that, on any level. There's no time to dwell in its horror. There's no time to feel the goosebumps rising. You're just told that they have risen. | Tell, Tell, Tell |
| The biggest fault of this book? It doesn't commit to its concept. You've got influencers (and wannabe influencers) in an asylum setting thinking they're doing a TV show competition. So they should be leaning into their established personas. But they all pretty quickly drop that façade, even before things take a turn for the gory. Mara is especially bad at this. She immediately, as soon as she sets foot on the set, starts doubting that it's a TV show. Before she's been shown anything to the contrary, she's thinking they've gone to far. And the first time she sees a bit of gore, she solidifies her thought that this show isn't a show at all. And I'm sorry, but you signed up for the horror show? And some F/X blood is enough to have you leaping off the bandwagon? It was just such a complete and utter switch-up that I didn't buy anything after that point. It was poorly done. So poorly done. | Character Break Down |
Rating
⭐⭐⭐
3/10
Fans of Kathryn Foxfield's campy thriller Come Out, Come Out, Whatever You Are will like this new reality-show-gone-wrong horror. Those who liked Juno Dawson's Survival Show will appreciate the perils of the entertainment industry that this book presents.
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Note: I was provided with an ARC by the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here are my own. |
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