The plot was completely engaging with vivid descriptions and enough narrative drive to keep to me racing to the heart-pounding finale. What a brilliant example of slasher horror fiction! Inspired by the author's own teenage nightmare, the water park was the perfect setting for this fun piece of summer horror. Kill River is pure summer slasher horror fun. It will definitely add to your experience. I recommend picking this one up this summer, especially if you are going camping or spending the day at a water park. It took me back to my childhood and gave me major nostalgia for all of those 80s slasher novels I read as a kid. Things get creepy as soon as the teens find the park, and as they spend the afternoon wasting time on the rides they eventually start to become separated, and then the slasher goodness really begins. I don't think I've ever read a horror novel that takes place in an abandoned water park. Once the reader gets past the summer camp opening, the book really picks up and becomes a thrill ride. Even though I personally never went to summer camp, I'm so familiar with it through teen books and films that it feels familiar. The camp scenes are fun and reminiscent of all those movies and books that made summer camp in the 80s seem like an absolute requirement for kids. The final girl needs to become friends with her prankster fellow campers in order for her to have a valid reason to abandon camp and follow a bunch of kids she just met out onto a dark lake at night. While the story does take a little time to pick up, I can appreciate the amount of setup. Kill River delivers everything you expect from 80s slasher horror. When I saw the cover for Kill River, and then learned it was written rather recently, I immediately expected an homage to those comfortably formulaic and over the top books of my childhood. There were definitely rules and a formula for the genre, and out of all those films and rack after rack of gaudy paperbacks, an entire generation of horror tropes was born.

OK, so I'm older than dirt, which means I grew up in the 80s, which also means that I was raised on a healthy diet of slasher movies and horror novels. This book was sent to me by the author in exchange for an honest review.

Cameron roubique