David and Patrick's parents warned them not to waste their money on the Amazing Sea Serpents they saw advertised in the back of a Wonder Woman comic. The boys should have listened. They follow the directions exactly, and wait...and nothing happens. So they dump the smelly contents of the little tank down a sewer grate, and then the Sea Serpents grow. Just Add Water is like a Goosebumps book for grownups-- and there's another book about X-ray glasses coming out later this year. I can't wait to get my hands on that one! There is plenty of some gore, but it's the silly horror movie kind, not the kind that makes me wish I hadn't read it.

Just Add Water by Hunter Shea was received direct from the publisher.  Hunter Shea is a writer I eagerly look forward to reading each and every one of his books.  His creature oriented books have never let me down.  Take two teenage boys, add in comic books and those old "rip off" ads in those comic books about money making machines and sea monsters, and you get this quick read, fun filled story.  Lastly, the vile green concoction that saves the day should be of no surprise as well. If you like coming of age quick reads, with sewer monsters and eccentric townsfolk, this may be the book for you.

5 stars

4 stars

The year is 1980 and best friends David and Patrick are looking forward to summer vacation. They are thirteen-year olds who love movies, super hero comics, baseball and swimming. They see an ad in one of their comic books for “Amazing Sea Serpents.” It’s only $4.95, so they send for them. After watching them for a week or so during which they do very little and smell an awful lot, they give up and put them down the storm sewer.

Then they basically forget about them until strange things begin to happen in their town. People are dying. They see the monsters for themselves and begin to make the connection to the Amazing Sea Serpents.

This book is a rollicking, fast moving trip down the wild side. It is a fun read. Oh I know it was supposed to be scary, but it was too much fun to be scary. The book is well written and plotted. It moved along nicely and in a straight line. I can just imagine 13-year old boys thinking like Pat and Dave did in the book.

And the secret weapon is just a scream!

I want to thank Netgalley and Kensington Books/Lyrical Underground for forwarding to me a copy of this delightful book to read.

When I was a kid, I wanted all the cheap little gizmos in the back of the comic books. Most of all, I wanted Sea Monkeys. Even though I knew they wouldn’t match the illustration, a part of me hoped for a happy little underwater royal family just like the pictures.

We all know that you got significantly less than you bargained for with those back-of-the-comic ads, but what would happen if you got exactly what was promised…and more?

In Just Add Water, by Hunter Shea, two boys order some Sea Monsters from the back of a comic book. What they end up with is a sludgy mess and into the sewer it goes…until they realize that something did happen with that sludgy mess. Something terrible.

With a lot of humor, a sense of adventure, and a lot of old school horror, Hunter Shea brings us a story to love. I had so much fun reading this and it’s clear that the author had just as much fun writing it.

This is a short book – more of a novella – but it feels like a very complete horror tale. I loved every page of it.

In the back of the book? A teaser for another back-of-the-comic horror story. Seriously fun concept and seriously fun horror!

When David and Patrick order Amazing Sea Serpents from the ad in the back of a Wonder Woman comic, they wait 6-8 weeks to receive an envelope of disappointment in the mail. However, when they dump the Amazing Sea Serpents down the sewer, they get more than their money's worth.

I'd pre-ordered this, fueled by nostalgic memories of Sea Monkey ads in the backs of comics back in the day and my fandom of Hunter Shea. Imagine my delight when it popped up on Netgalley AND I got approved for it.

Just Add Water is another one of Hunter Shea's lovably gory creature features. David and Patrick are junior high kids at the dawn of the 1980s. Like many of us who were comic nerds in the days before it such a thing was fashionable, the ad for some amazing anthropomorphic pets caught their eyes. Unlike most of us, they actually ordered them. Turns out, what they got was monster eggs.

Just Add Water feels like an 80's kids' monster movie, like The Monster Squad, only with a much higher body count and ten times as much gore. While there's a dose of nostalgia, it's so smeared in gore that it's soon unrecognizable. And the early 80s nostalgia isn't limited to comics and TV. There's also a key party that goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Hunter Shea's writing continues to entertain the shit out of me. I'm convinced we would have been buds back in our younger days due to our mutual interests in comics, cryptids, and monsters in general. Now if he'd just lift that damn restraining order...

Just Add Water is a horror novella that is a hell of a lot of bloody fun. I can't wait to read the next installment in the loosely connected series, Optical Delusion. Four out of five stars.