I’m so shocked and annoyed that I’m not even sure where to start this. A quick overview of the novel as a whole: A quick-pace slasher that seems like a rip-off of the movie Haunt (2019), except it was badly executed with one-dimensional characters, stiff dialogue, constant word repetition and desperately needing a rewrite. I’ll be sure to stay far far far away from anything Vic Kerry has ever written or writes in the future and I recommend you to do the same.

ATTENTION - THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON

The characters are not only the clichê archetypes present in every slasher, but also written in a way that was forced, misogynistic, racist, and all-around offensive. The (literal) monsters were a family of little people that hunted the teenagers in order to eat them as if that wasn’t bad enough, the reader finds out later that they’re actually Hecesiiteihii. The Hecesiiteihii come from an Arapaho legend and are, essentially (as described by Google) “cannibal dwarfs”, so add ripping off your “monsters” from Native American culture to the list of awful things contained in a single novel. Now we move on to the main characters and even more offensive content.

The Angry Black Girl: Keneitra is implied to have had a rough life, mentioning how many times she’d had to physically fight others, is always in confrontational mode even before they’d entered the Spook Trail Maze, was the only one that disagreed with the group later on in the story and had to be convinced by the Good Virgin Girl to keep going and was also the only one to refer to the little people as midgets. Keneitra was Harrison’s blind date to the Spook Trail Maze, meaning the author couldn’t even be bothered to put the only black character in the core friend group which also resulted in her having the least amount of backstory.

The Asshole Boyfriend/Drug User: Dwight is Mirian’s boyfriend and his favorite pastime is cheating on her with as many girls as he possibly can, he is a major douchebag, sexist, and bullies all of his friends (who, for some unknown reason continue to hang out with him, even though they all hate Dwight). He’s the one that “drags” the group to the Spook Trail maze, he also takes LCD before driving to the maze, in case the reader hadn’t already picked up on the fact that he doesn’t care about anyone except himself. Dwight is also, thankfully, the first to die and we are spared from having to read chapters in his POV.

The Good Virgin Girl: Mirian’s Dwight girlfriend and has been with him for a while, even though she is aware that he is constantly cheating on her and treats her like garbage. For absolutely no good reason she decides to tag along to the Spook Trail, which makes no sense because she doesn’t like anything horror and dumped him during dinner before they arrived at the attraction. She is described as being positive and loving, always worried about other people, but also determined and emotionally strong, as if she wasn’t enough of a cliche already. She is also always being protected by Jake, without whom she wouldn’t have lasted five seconds.

The Condescending Nerd: Harrison is, surprise surprise, another misogynistic asshole, but the author clearly didn’t intend the reader to see him that way since he survives almost until the end and Kerry’s logic was pretty much killing them from the biggest POS to the nicest one (Mirian). Nonetheless, he has been set up on several blind dates by his friend Lydia (The Whore) and he hated all of them because all of the girls were “shallow” and only talked about their “petty dramas” and even had the nerve to get angry and throw their drinks in his face when he started to blatantly ignore him. According to him, the problem was that Lydia kept setting him up with pretty girls when what he wanted was a girl with “substance” that could “maintain an interesting enough conversation” to “keep his mind from wandering.”

The Whore: Lydia is constructed to be Dwight’s female version, supposedly not good enough for Jake because you guessed it, she was too shallow and a whore that gets bored of boys easily. Mind you, this girl is never mentioned to have cheated on him and what made her superficial was buying a new outfit to go into the maze, due to the fact that she didn’t own anything appropriate for that kind of activity. Oh yes, she also “swore like a sailor”, which apparently is enough to mark her as a “bad girl.”

The Nice Guy: Jake is supposed to be Mirian’s ideal romantic partner, they are both in relationships that they don’t want to be in with people that are not nice and “worthy” of their companionship. In Jake’s words, Lydia and Dwight deserved to be together due to how awful they were, however, he hasn’t broken up with her, even though he has no respect for Lydia. He hears Miran swear in one of the scenes and is shocked because he sees her as a “good girl”, whereas his girlfriend “swore like a sailor”, but “Jake he’d never thought of her as a good girl.”