Genre : Horror/Teen Format : Paperback Pages : 346 Published : 2020

“My dad’s at least . And it had been empty for over a year . At the time of the fire .”

Summary : The book opens with a young girl dying at a wild pool party . We fast forward a little bit and we meet another young girl ( Quinn ) alongside her father ( Glenn) who just moved into town ( Kettle Springs ) . It doesn’t take long for Quinn to learn about this town , it has a clown mascot named Frendo , the teens are mostly delinquents , and the adults don’t get along with the teens (shocker) . Hell , it’s kinda comical how much the teens and adults don’t get along … until people start getting killed .

“This new generation – they need to be brought in line . And the people in this room are not blameless ! “

Review : I’m struggling a bit with this review . On the one hand it is a fairly standard slasher story with Quinn and Glenn being a good believable family that just experienced a tragedy . On the other hand , the book doesn’t do all that much interesting . The social commentary kinda steps on the feet of any twists that could’ve worked as it’s pretty heavy handed and anyone that’s read a book before can predict what’s going to happen from that . However “They Live” was similar but still rocked as well as “Footloose” , the main problem with that I think the majority of the characters in this book aren’t strong enough to hold it . Of course , this is a secondary issue though , my actual biggest problems with the book is that there isn’t enough clown antics . The clowning around mostly consisted of old rednecks dressed as clowns . I was expecting more clownsploitation stuff … The book isn’t bad but I can’t say it’s a must read either . Got it at a thrift book store for 3 bucks and that feels like a good price . I know they’ve made a movie and the book has sequels but I’m not motivated to check them out but let me know if I should give those a shot .

“How can you hate Frendo ? Frendo is Kettle Springs , “