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    2 Book Lovers Reviews

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 Suspense/Mysteries

Read Greg's review of FantasticLand.

​​I was in the mood for a novel that would scare me and keep my pulse racing. FantasticLand came highly recommended to me by my husband, so I knew that it was probably going to satisfy my creepy craving.

The book is written in interview format. The “author” of a book about FantasticLand is interviewing various individuals who could give their account on the events that had transpired during the hurricane and its aftermath that left the employees at the park for weeks.

I will admit, this book had me a little worried at first. I know that the scene has to be set, the reader needs to know how everything came to be before getting to the nitty-gritty, but after so much time spent on Hurricane Sadie and its effect on certain regions of Florida, I was so ready to get to FantasticLand and see what had become of the staff who were stranded there. I kept asking my husband if it was going to start getting exciting soon, and he assured me that it was. He didn’t steer me wrong.

FantasticLand was a Disney-esque amusement park on the coast of Florida. Divided up into different “lands” with a main street that was home to many shops, eateries, and confectioneries, this was a popular spot for families to visit. While that area of Florida was not usually hit by the ravages of hurricanes that seemed to keep to the south, FantasticLand was prepared and equipped with enough water, supplies, and an underground area to keep its employees safe in the event of a hurricane.

When “it” hit the fan, it really hit the fan. It didn’t take too long for the employees at the park to get restless. They lost power, it was dark, wet, and it became clear that they weren’t getting rescued any time soon. Alliances formed, people were getting bored, and one particular gruesome act left the employees scrambling to protect themselves.

I kept wondering how it could get so bad so fast. How could everyone turn on each other so quickly. Why couldn’t they just wait (even impatiently) for rescue crews to arrive. The majority of the employees were young people without their phones, therefore, they lost their ability to get information, news, and contact with the outside world. These were hard times, very hard.

With each interview, the stories from inside the park got more depraved and gorier. How could these people do this to one another? With every account, I shook my head in disappointment with humanity (fictional or not), but as I sit here and write this review, it really wasn’t all that surprising.  People do bad things to other people all the time, I shouldn’t have been shocked that it came down to this.

There was plenty of action, gore, and vile behavior. As the interviews progressed, the reader was given various accounts of what had transpired. While it was a fictional novel, Bockoven wrote it in such a clever way that it almost read as though it had been based on true events. FantasticLand was a riveting read that kept my pulse rate high.

*4 Stars