What a great read! So funny and well written. I enjoyed it immensely.

Dale Figgo is a white supremacist who has started his own version of the Proud Boys.

Viva is Dale’s flatmate who enjoys messing with Dale and telling on him to his mother.. Viva works for the Minks, a rich elderly couple who use their money to bribe commissioners and aid ultra right-wing politicians.

The Minks are funding a “charity” for congressman Clure Bouette, which he is using to help ensure his upcoming election win, with the help of Dale Figgo’s group.

And then there’s Twilly, a wealthy man with anger issues (only towards those who deserve it). He uses his money and free time to create chaos on those who he deems are bad people. He meets Viva on a plane one day, and from there, the story begins.

I can’t tell you how much I laughed at the ridiculousness of this book! The characters are amazing, the plot was well thought out and delivered. This book won’t be for everyone, but it was definitely for me.

Having read a couple of hiaasens books I looking forward to a fun read. This one didn't deliver. If you never read this author and want to start read his early novels they are interesting and very funny. Stopped halfway through this one for couple days before I finished it. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the digital arc of this book

This book was hilarious! I love Carl Hiaasen and his bumbling characters. This one is heavy on the political commentary which I find funny and scathing. I was hoping his newest book would be about Andrew Yancy but I was not disappointed in his new characters.

Hiaasen delivers a humorous take on today's chaotic political landscape. I was chuckling and laughing out loud as the characters bungle their far-right agenda. Author is on point with his humor and satire about today's politics. You see the bigotry, the sliminess of politicians and the total hypocrisy through humor. Thanks to Net Galley for the arc. Won't be going to Flordia anytime soon!

Fever Beach is exactly what you’d expect from Carl Hiaasen: a snarky, politically-driven, acerbically funny, dark mystery based in Florida. It’s entirely ridiculous and so much fun to read—as long as you lean politically left.

Viva Morales is a great tenant with a neonazi landlord, Dale Figgo. Figgo, in addition to being the proud founder of Strokers of Liberty, is unbelievably imbecilic. Through an evermore convoluted, yet amusing, web of connections Viva and her new beau, Twilly Spree, aim to bring down Figgo and his ragtag group of fascists, including the unfortunately named Jonas Onus.

This book goes everywhere. Depending on your tastes you’ll think it’s hilarious or wildly offensive. It can be a bit much, but that’s also what makes it great.

Highly recommended. 4.5 stars rounded down. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a huge fan of Carl Hiaasen. I’ve read all of his novels for adults, and watched Bad Monkey. This latest outing has many of the same tropes as his earlier work. Developers are bad. Some criminals are stupid. A man with a mysterious background (and, usually, an odd name) has the resources to stick a wrench in someone’s plans…and still “gets the girl.”
In this novel we have the added pleasure of watching the story play out from inside a disorganized white nationalist group with ties to an incompetent Florida congressman funded by morally bereft millionaires. Can white nationalists be this stupid, Congressmen and developers this corrupt? I’ve lived in Florida and can most assuredly answer in the affirmative. There’s a lot to laugh at…until I’d want to cry with the realization that this is just another day in the Sunshine State.
My thanks to the author, publisher, producer, and #NetGalley for early access to the audiobook of #FeverBeach for review purposes. Publication date: 15 May 2025.

I really enjoyed this book. It had a lot of interconnected characters.
The bad guys were all stumbling baboons. The humor is what kept me going.
The story overall was great. A love interest, schemes, and bribery. All the good elements for a thriller.

However, one fair point is that the author makes it sound like all white nationalists are disorganized, looney tunes and they are all inept. I hope that readers are smart enough to understand that NOT all Neo-Nazi's are not that disorganized, stupid, and lazy.

Overall this is another knock out hit for the author.

While the premise was nice, the writing was... not what I expected. I wanted more from the characters because I felt that what was on the front cover and the front flap was not what we were given.

A politically-loaded novel poking fun at all things Florida. I'm giving Fever Beach four stars for the writing style, plot and odd-ball characters, but the book seemed to drag in the last half. I'm a fan of the author and liked his previous books, but this one had a lot of "telling" and internal dialogue that slowed the plot at times. I grew weary of the book's emphasis on politics (although with a humorous treatment) and the repeated motif of using sex dolls.

Thank you NetGalley and the Publisher for the eARC.
My cheeks are still hurting from laughing so much after reading this book, it's hilarious.
My two favorite characters are Twilly and Viva, just about the only sane people in a story filled with a crooked Congressman, evil philanthropists, Dumb and Dumber wannabee racist right-wing extremists and other outrageous characters bumbling about in the hot Florida sunshine.
Twilly and Viva are determined to solve a dastardly mystery and everyone gets their just results after many
crazy high jinks. In our current political system this is THE book to read, it'll make you LOL!

God, I love the way Carl Hiaasen’s wonderfully wacky mind works. The characters he creates are such a specifically detestable breed of idiotic Floridians that you can’t help but love the story he tells with them.

You certainly don’t have to be from Florida to appreciate his humor, but if you’ve ever lived in the tropical hell that is South Florida, you’re sure to laugh out loud while reading his books.

Falling in line with his previous novels, this one focuses on the current political divide in our country and cranks up the right-wing insanity to a level of idiocy we’ve never seen before (yet)!

I’m talking about smearing poop on Confederate statues, trying to intimidate people on Election Day with guns that have unknowingly had the trigger springs removed, racist elderly men enjoying sex dolls, and all kinds of hilarious hijinks.

Do you need specific language to draw you in? I’ve got you!

“…the following summer would be convicted in juvenile court of crashing a stolen Rivian into a drive-through cannabis dispensary after the cashier declined to accept a bag of baby bird skeletons as payment.”

This man writes the most delightfully bizarre books, and as always, I am 100% here for it!!

Thank you to #netgalley for making my year with this ARC of #feverbeach and to Carl Hiaasen for transitioning out of the golden age of newspapers and still entertaining us with his writing in these unfortunately unprecedented days.

Fever Beach-This is Carl Hiaasen’s latest romp through South Florida with all the quirky, eccentric characters similar to his previous novels. It’s about politics and elections that mirror much of this county’s recent past. Lots of laughs and some minor violence set the tone. It’s a very enjoyable read and I recommend it. Thanks NetGalley for this entertaining ARC.

Womanizer and substance abuser Clure Boyette has a lock on winning his Florida reelection campaign-his opponent is a single mother without significant cash flow and a Democrat in a solid red area. But you can never be too sure. That's why he has convinced the couple funding the Mink Foundation that to further their right-wing goals, their best move would be to fund him. He sets up a phony charity called The Wee Hammers whose purpose is to teach little children to work construction jobs so they could leave elementary school with marketable skills (and they are actually "building" a house.) The Minks can now funnel 2 million dollars to Boyette's campaign without being tied to him and he can buy himself a group of white extremists to make sure he wins his race.

Of course, in any plan there is always a fly in the ointment-but in this case it's a swarm. Dale Figgo and Jonas Onus are in a constant battle for the leadership of their Proud Boys wannabe losers group, Strokersz for Liberty, and are always trying to get their hands on Boyette's cash. Boyette's father has been cleaning up his son's messes for years so that when he needs political clout, it's bought and paid for. Viva Morales, who works for the Minks is great with the sweet talk but not the follow through. But the worst threat to the "fool-proof" plan is Twilly Spree, a multimillionaire do-gooder with anger issues who is not happy with anything that Boyette is doing, and has ways to stop him. Some of them are actually legal. 

If you read Hiaassen's previous book Squeeze Me, you'll have a good idea of where this one is going. Sending up Florida, dirty politics, and ultra right wing extremism, Fever Beach is hysterically funny while also envisioning an unfortunately plausible scenario in these fraught political times. Much more fulfilling than watching the news.

I regret to say this is a pale imitation of Carl Hiaasen's great comic crime novels from the 1980s and 90s, which went slowly downhill in the 2000s and--hopefully--hit bottom with Fever Beach. It's not unreadable, there are chuckles and points of interest to merit two stars, but it was bad enough I had to check that Hiaasen is still alive and his estate hasn't hired some guy to change his name to Carl Hiassen and continue the series.

A major gripe is pacing. Classic Hiaasen are roller-coaster rides of wacky subplots--each one better than the main plot of most thrillers--that keep the action moving and come together for tremendous climaxes. This book has one not-very-exciting plot that plods along---with some random one-off side events--and a climax it would be charitable to describe as "limp."

The climax has another problem. It revolves around people seeing the stupid and hateful antics of armed "citizen poll watchers" harassing non-White voters, and coming out in full force to deliver an overwhelming victory for the Democratic candidate. This seems more like a wet dream for a progressive still trying to process the 2016 Presidential election than a plausible political analysis of the attitudes of Florida voters.

Another big problem is none of the characters are remotely human or relatable. The best Hiaasen novels have real people at the core, characters that seem to be drawn from people Hiaasen has met, and even the cardboard villains and extras have some depth. Congressman David Dillbeck from Strip Tease, for example, has some similarity to Congressman Clure Boyette from Fever Beach. But Boyette is a boring stereotype of an irresponsible, stupid, humorless and corrupt overgrown frat boy, while Dillbeck--for all his corruption and stupidity--nurtures a deep romantic (albeit highly unconventional) passion for Erin Grant and takes life with a strong dose of humor.

I was annoyed that the book conflates cabaret cross-dressing performers with homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals. Those are four different categories. Even in a comic novel, people deserve to be treated as they are, not mashed together with other people who are related only in the minds of bigots.

I have not read Hiaasen's fiction for juveniles, but perhaps they explain why there are many gratuitous references to excrement of many species, snot, farts, belches, sex toys and especially masterbation that seem included for sniggers from pre-teen boys rather than embellishments of an adult novel.

The book seems untethered in time. Based on events described it appears to be the early months of the second Trump administration, but there is a Congressional election that occurs a couple of weeks later. The neo-Nazi militants seem more Timothy McVeigh than Richard Spencer. The characters use their phones for calls and texts, they communicate in chat rooms or--if they want privacy--the dark web. One reads print copies of the New Yorker, snail mailed to her apartment. No one uses voice commands, smart phones, self-driving electric cars, AI or cryptocurrency. Home security is by video camera and television monitors, no wifi smart cameras. A character copies another person's phone contacts by displaying them one by one and using her phone to photograph the screen. Of course people still do all these things, but the overall effect is more late-1990s than early 2025.

I got an advance uncorrected copy so perhaps these are typos but I noticed a lot of hard-to-interpret adverbs such as a character "decrepitly humped" a sex doll while another "arduously changed" his shirt.

I loved this book! Could not put it down. The normal cast of Florida "characters" that make for a good Hiaasen book. You feel absorbed in the Central Florida vibe and in the end all the disparate stories come together in a great conclusion. I also love that Carl dedicated the book to the memory of Jimmy. As a Parrothead I appreciated the nod to Bubba in both the dedication and in the characters.

Review of uncorrected eBook file

This satire plays out around Dale Figgo, founder of Strokerz for Liberty. Readers meet his pal, Jonas Onus, his tenant, Viva Morales, and philanthropists Claude and Electra Mink. Add Twilly Spree, Congressman Clure Boyette, a group of supremacists, and a contract killer and readers have the makings of a twisty tale where the author highlights power and corruption, politics, money laundering, and conspiracies in an outrageously hilarious tale set in Florida.

There are laugh-out-loud moments amid the absurdity; the majority of the cringe-worthy characters are wholly unlikable and Dale’s moronic antics keeps readers chuckling. Readers who enjoy satire, political commentary, and absurdity taken to new heights will find much to appreciate here.

Recommended.

I received a free copy of this eBook from Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor / Knopf and NetGalley
#FeverBeach #NetGalley

Thanks to Netgally and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!
I loved this book! I don't think I've ever laughed so hard and so often while reading. This was the perfect palate cleanser/break from my normal thriller and romance stories. I will say that I probably enjoyed this so much because I am on the same page politically as the author, so if you're on the other side of the aisle you'll probably hate it.
This is my first book by this author but definitely won't be the last.

Carl Hiaasen is in true form with this rural Florida romp. He humorously takes on the conservative residents of the region, be they wanna-be rioters or falsely philanthropic billionaires. Politics is rife in this book and Dale Figgo, Clure Boyette and the billionaire Minks conspiracy to rig an election ( or two!) are thwarted at the every turn by a rich vigilante for justice and Figgo’s tenant, the lovely Viva Morales, office manger for the Mink Foundation.
Hold on for the action as the events unfold! Great story. Hiaasen does it again.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the bad guys got theirs? Carl Hiaasen proves that all the crazy, stupid, criminal things the rest of us believe about Florida (and politicians, and billionaires) aren’t true - the reality is much, much worse. Now if there were only real heroes like Viva and Twilly who set their sights a little higher…there might be hope for the rest of the nation.
In the meantime, read this book.

Carl Hiaasen gives us what we all need right now--a portrayal of bumbling white supremacists who get everything they deserve. Twilly Spree, a man of independent means with anger issues and a lot of free time on his hands, makes it his mission to bring down the Strokers for Liberty from the inside. Soon he finds himself wrapped up with Viva Morales, the SfL leader's scornful roommate who just needs a cheap place to live and abhors her landlord's crackpot viciousness. They find themselves in the middle of scandalous corruption involving Viva's rich-as-Croesus employers, an incompetent congressman, and a contract killer who does not care for the anti-Semitism displayed by the people who hired him. It's Florida at its most Florida-mannish and it's a hilarious good time.