Genre ~ crime mystery thriller
Featuring ~ missing teens, police procedural, serial killer, dark thriller, attempted r@pe, imprisonment, abuse (I might be missing some triggers)
POV ~ multiple 3rd person
Publisher ~ Macmillan audio
Release date ~ book ~ October 5, 2015, audio ~ April 11, 2023
Page count ~ 434
Audio length ~ 11 hours 39 minutes
My rating ~ 4⭐
My review:
We have a few main characters:
Blake ~ missing Wonderland worker, Vanessa ~ new deputy police chief, Oscar ~ security guard at Wonderland, Bianca ~ CEO of Wonderland who likes to sleep with the teenage staff, and Ava ~ Vanessa’s daughter who just started working at Wonderland.
Vanessa begins her new position with dead bodies and missing teens. I found her to be a great investigator and she acted like she really cared about the missing boys. She certainly did a better job than her predecessor.
This is a pretty dark read with more sexual encounters than I would have expected from a thriller. Overall, it was fast paced with some predictability, some twists and a whole lotta creepiness.
Narration:
Eunice Wong ~ 11 hours 39 minutes ~ a great job.
*Thanks to the author, Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the audio copy. I am voluntarily leaving my honest review*
Add to your never ending TBR ~ goodreads
I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read it.
Book blurb:
Fans of Chelsea Cain and Lisa Gardner will devour this edgy thriller about the gruesome secrets hidden beneath a small-town amusement park. From the author of Creep, Freak, and The Butcher, Jennifer Hillier’s “fine knack for creating hideous killers” (Booklist) is vividly on display.
Welcome to Wonderland. By day, it’s a magical place boasting a certain retro charm. Excited children, hands sticky with cotton candy, run frenetically from the Giant Octopus ride to the Spinning Sombrero, while the tinkling carnival music of the giant Wonder Wheel—the oldest Ferris wheel in the Pacific Northwest—fills the air. But before daybreak, an eerie feeling descends. Maybe it’s the Clown Museum, home to creepy wax replicas of movie stars and a massive collection of antique porcelain dolls. Or maybe it’s the terrifyingly real House of Horrors. Or…maybe it’s the dead, decaying body left in the midway for all the Wonder Workers to see.
Vanessa Castro’s first day as deputy police chief of Seaside, Washington, is off to a bang. The unidentifiable homeless man rotting inside the tiny town’s main tourist attraction is strange enough, but now a teenage employee—whose defiant picture at the top of the Wonder Wheel went viral that same morning—is missing. As the clues in those seemingly disparate crimes lead her down a mysterious shared path of missing persons that goes back decades, she suspects the seedy rumors surrounding the amusement park’s dark history might just be true. She moved to Seaside to escape her own scandalous past, but has she brought her family to the center of an insidious killer’s twisted game? Acclaimed author Jennifer Hillier’s bone-chilling thriller is masterful and fast-paced, hurtling toward a shocking, bloody conclusion.
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Nice upfront review!
Thanks, Phyllis!