My first impressions (Writing down my first impressions of the book. NOT an in-depth review. Reviews are based on personal enjoyment.)

RANK: Beautiful

While I enjoy some parts of the book, the rest left me feeling flat.

Bockoven does a good job on the environmental building of the park. There’s a sense of lifelessness and eeriness. As if a theme park should never be empty for this long. This helps make certain scenes stand out.

There are a few moments of the book that I enjoyed. These moments are well written and engaging however those are far and few between. These are Council of Peace, A kid hiding in a Hotel, The “Freaks” and Brock himself. Here are my spoiler thoughts The council of pieces. That was a great moment. In which Brock firing a cannon ball at Sam and a big fight breaks out. Jason hiding out in a hotel, away from the group, until two masked individuals try to catch him. The “Freaks” who uses fake body parts and fake blood to scare people away and avoid fights. Brock is the only character I find intriguing. This guy quickly got people together to form a group and no body dared to go against him. That is some real skill right there.
With that being said, the rest of book is left to be desire.

The biggest problem is how the interviews are conduced. The Author’s note mentions that Adam, the person who is interviewing the victims, had to streamline the interview to make it flow better. This is a bad decision. Without Adam’s questions, I couldn’t tell if the victims were answering a question or they’re just recounting their events. It makes Adam appear to not care about his interviews nor does he seem interested in their stories. Victims come a cross as if they’re reading from a script; They’re not having a hard recalling anything. There is no mannerisms in these interviews. What I mean is that victims don’t pause, sob when they get to a hard part of the story, they don’t get irate, and they don’t try to cut the interview short. These manners could have added to the story. Only the penultimate chapter felt like a real interview.

While Brock is the only character I liked, the rest of them felt beige. There is no distinction between each of them. You could switch each characters place, expect for Brock, and it wouldn’t change anything.

Overall, This book has some enjoyable parts to it however flat characters and poorly written interviews hold this book back, personally.

Heard the audiobook, which was great, with different narrators for each character. This made it easier to imagine how the characters acted and thought. The author manage to keep the story interesting throughout, by connecting the dots across the different interviews. Not perfect or too realistic, but absolutely entertaining. I would love for this to made into a TV show or a movie! ( )

DNF ( )

The interview-style of this book made it so much more interesting. I enjoy how realistic it made the book with multiple points of view and human-error when it comes to recall of events. What made this a truly fantastic horror book is that there was nothing that was out of the realm of possibilities. Yeah the timeline and speed of escalation felt a bit unrealistic but I think good theoretical explanations are provided. ( )

Reread 2024: Upon rereading this book, it still gave me the same feeling. It was like the accident on the side of the road that you just can't look away from. And it stayed with me. I put this on because I haven't stopped thinking about it since I read it last year, but I also wanted to listen to something while I worked. I figured this was a good pick as I didn't need to give it my full attention. Oddly enough, I caught things this time around that I do not remember from my first time reading it. There was one comment about IsNotReal that I missed and kind of pissed me off--I even contemplated dropping the star rating. But the overall story held up and horrified me all over again. It still deserves 5 stars. This will be a book I return to often.

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2023:
This book was not what I expected. I did not realize it was done interview style. That can go either way, so I wasn't even sure I would like it in the beginning. The narrators carried this book! That is not to say that the author did not write a good story. It comes across differently when you HEAR the emotions reliving their ordeal evokes. This book was told from multiple povs, but it was not confusing as it sometimes happens. Everyone had a different experience, and the listener relived it with them. This was a good book, I just recommend the auiobook as it changes the experience. ( )