DNF at 16%. The synopsis sounded really compelling, but the story (told in interviews) failed to pull me in. I found the storyline to this point very stagnant.

“The masks appear to be off. Please plan accordingly.”
🧡🧡🧡🧡

Come Knocking is a metafiction meditation about an interactive play that, from my reading perception, draws inspiration from Dante’s Inferno, Eyes Wide Shut, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Phantom of the Opera, and like a haunted rendering of Cirque du Soleil.

The book is written as Reddit posts about the play and interviews from survivors of the March 14th massacre of Come Knocking conducted by the journalist writing the novel. These chapters explicitly detail the horrors of that night from the perspectives of the audience, the stagehands, the performers, the bartenders, security, the EMTs, and those who participated in the overall unraveling of the show, members from a forum called Who’s There?

Come Knocking disturbed me greatly because, of course, the humans are the monsters, and it’s truly about how the internet can push angry people into becoming weapons of chaos that cause catastrophic harm to others who are simply trying to enjoy an event. I loved how Bockoven portrayed this with the literal hijack of the play’s control room, giving Who’s There? the ability to fuck up stages, engage flameflowers, and release performers from their safety nets. Scary shit. It’s all too real in the world we live in. When the control is put into the wrong hands, it’s deadly. We all know this. People aren’t seen as people anymore, just the enemy. We all have eyes and ears; we’ve seen this play out for decades and somehow keep falling for it.

Keep in mind that Reddit can be annoying in and of itself, so some of the chapters made me 🙄, which is the point. Aside from that, there is a powerful narrative here about how people tend to destroy beautiful things. It’s very Fight Club-esque in that way. If you’re into that, read it. If you’re not, this probably isn’t for you.

I love theatre and immersive experiences. Love a theme and dressing up for it. I would 100% be in the audience for this and “get it.” I really enjoyed this one. I am definitely a Mike Bockoven fan!

Thank you so much to @netgalley and @skyhorsepub for the ARC!

If you enjoyed Fantasticland, you’ll likely enjoy Come Knocking. I liked both and if epistolary horror is your jam this is an interesting one. Come Knocking is the recounting of an interactive theatre show gone wrong. This is strictly a human horrors book and many of the deaths were very vivid and being shown from different perspectives made an impression.

Come Knocking is written predominantly in different interviews with people associated with the show and a few audience members. I struggled a bit with the sheer amount of voices as most weren’t very distinctive. They all blended together a bit and considering there aren’t any objective vantage points in the book I couldn’t totally mesh with the chaos. I also couldn’t pinpoint the timeline very well and struggled to imagine a show with so many dangerous components would ever be allowed.

It’s a fun read and getting to imagine Come Knocking as a show was pretty cool. Bockoven does a great job at building that tension before destruction which definitely pulls the reader in. If you like off the rails epistolary horror then I’d give Come Knocking a try. The environment Bockoven envisions is one that will sit with you for a bit.

Thank you to SkyHorse Publishing for my gifted ARC!

Come Knocking has an interesting premise. It sounds like a horror movie I’d love to watch. Despite the writing being incredible, I still found myself frequently getting confused trying to follow this six story tale. I kept waiting for clarification that didn’t come until far too late into the book. Which left me feeling … bummed. To say the least. I hyped this one up in my mind and it ended up letting me down in the end. I will definitely try more from the author in the future!

Loved this. Bockoven follows the same formula as Fantasticland in Come Knocking (a reporter compiles interviews with various people involved in a multi-fatality event). Only this time, instead of things going horribly wrong at an amusement park, they go horribly wrong at an interactive theater experience. And oh, boy, do they go wrong.

Bockoven is such a skilled writer. He grabs you by the face and shoves you into the action of the story so skillfully. I was fully engrossed in this book the entire time I was reading it, which is no easy feat.

The one place the writing suffers is that some of Bockoven's characters come off as archetypes rather than fully fleshed-out characters. That's likely a weakness of the format, and I wouldn't change that. Getting this story from multiple perspectives makes it feel very immediate and very real. If you need evidence that Bockoven is fully capable of creating characters with more depth, look no further than the fictional reporter who compiled the story. That man needs a drink.

On a personal note, I found this book particularly chilling because of my job. While I don't work in theater, part of my job is to guide the general public through an experience. All of my coworkers have noticed a pretty dramatic uptick in the last few months of people behaving terribly, and I saw that reflected in the early parts of Come Knocking. Visitors often ask me if I'm afraid of floods, fires, or other natural disasters when I'm at work. The first thing that always comes to my mind is "No. I'm afraid of you."

Overall, an excellent read, though I would use caution if you're someone who may be triggered by the awful things people do to each other. Thanks to NetGalley and Skyhorse Publishing for the eARC.

I consider myself lucky being able to read an ARC of Come Knocking, the newest book from Mike Bockoven. I recently read Fantasticland and loved it. I said I needed more in this type of format, then I found out about Come Knocking. Come Knocking is another great book by Bockoven. The style he uses is so different than most books I read normally.

In the book, reporter Adam Jakes is back, this time giving an account on the tragic story of interactive theater play, Come Knocking. It is set up the same way as Fantasticland, which to me is fantastic (I’m sorry, but it was there). There’s interviews, transcribed voicemails, and some Reddit posts all rolled into one haunting package about a night where joy and love for the arts turns into a blaze of murder and mayhem. It is mostly centered around one night, but we do get insight into how we got to the particular night where the main events happen.

It is a bit different than Fantasticland as it really is about this one night where everything just spiraled out of control, instead of this small period of time in the park in the previous book. I think this was a good idea though because it doesn’t feel like a copy/paste type of thing. Similar, but different you know? Honestly I could read a whole slew of books in this style concerning different events.

Overall, I loved this, and only slightly, very slightly, liked it a bit less than Fantasticland. Think the setting was the case here because I LOVE theme parks, and a dark period at a Disney like part just sold me more. It is slight though, because the book is written just as well, if not better as it did draw me in a bit more. That could be also that I read the other book. Now I’m arguing semantics with myself.

Come Knocking is an excellent read for any thriller/horror fans. I can’t wait to see what else Bockoven does after this. Hopefully more following Adam. We will see. All I know is, no matter what book comes knocking at more door next, I can’t wait to read it. I’m not even sorry for that one.

Quick, fun read. I really enjoyed the ‘found footage’ type feel, but will admit that the story dragged a bit at half way mark. However, the ending was very well done. Will be going back and reading Fantasticland.

After reading this, I feel like I have experienced the immersive theatrical performance that is Come Knocking for myself. Honestly, I don’t know if I made it out alive. First off, I have to say how much I love love love the writing style and format of this book. Just like Fantasticland, it’s written as a series of interviews, etc to convey the story and this makes it feel so personal and real. Second, this book is full of chaos, violence, emotion, and gore, but the most horrific part of all was the removal of the mask to show the inhumane things people are capable of. I’m pretty sure Bockoven writes with the intent of getting into your psyche and staying there and that’s exactly what this book did. It’s one I will think about often.

"It’s been a safe haven in a strange world, a place of refuge in a storm of all sorts. A place we gather to be our most elegant selves. We’ve all breathed breath into this place, along with the spirits that are here and will continue to live on long after that final moment."

- Sleep No More, 1/5/25, final performance pre-show toast

I'm not a horror reader. I did attend Sleep No More over 30 times through the course of its 14 year lifespan. I was drawn into this by the cover, having worn that very mask so many times, and the blurb. At no point did I anticipate reading a graphic description of a burning man's brain leaking out of his skull while his wife announced she was having an affair.

Additionally, the timeline of the massacre did not seem to work on a scale and the several of the characters sounded the same despite being drastically different individuals. Would have been 1 star but added a second for taking the piss out of Emursive, I mean Dumb Willy.

My thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I absolutely loved Fantasic Land by this author, and so when I found out he was publishing another book, I BOLTED to see if I could read an early copy. Mile Bockoven writes in such a unique style that it is hard to walk away.
3.5 stars, rounded up.

Structured similarly to the author's previous novel, [book:FantasticLand|28695606], Come Knocking also portrays a tragic event through a series of interviews, plus a few Reddit posts and a few other mixed media elements interspersed. I do really like the structure and the way the story slowly comes together, but unlike the several weeks over which events unfold in FantasticLand, the events here unfold during a short time period in one night at six story immersive theater experience (though we also hear about what made things so tense leading up to that night).


One thing that was really distracting for me is that the timeline of events that night just did not seem to add up to me. I was hoping it would all make sense eventually, but after I finished, I went back to various sections trying to make sense of things and it just didn't add up to me. Am I just not understanding it? Is it meant to not make sense because people's memories are faulty? Are these just problems in the ARC that will be corrected before final publication? I don't know, so I won't detail my issues here but will submit them as notes to the publisher, but suffice it to say that to me out of the story.


There is a bit of gore here, and a lot of instances of a specific type of injury that I had to skim over because I hate reading about it, and between this and a particular, much worse, thing that happened in Fantasticland that almost made me stop reading, I'm questioning whether this author's books are for me. But if you aren't sensitive to body horror it shouldn't be an issue.

Overall this was a fascinating story of a tragedy, with a structure that worked well for putting together all the layers of a horrific event and what caused it, including how what happens on the internet spills into real life. It didn't all work for me, and I didn't like it as much as FantasticLand, but I do really enjoy reading books with this kind of innovative structure and about how people experience scary events like this one.

I have been following this author since I first read Fantasticland, a book that left me spellbound, flabbergasted, and just a little bit disturbed. This book is written in a similar narrative and interview format and unfortunately just didn't have the same effect on me. I found the repeated use of the title started to get on my nerves, especially since it is such an odd choice for a theatre experience. However, that is likely just a me thing. I enjoy horror novels set in theme parks and I think that was why I was so captivated by the prior book I mentioned. This one just left me fumbling and disappointed.

Mike Bockoven’s Come Knocking is a haunting, slow-burn descent into chaos that asks a familiar question: what happens when the systems we trust completely fall apart?

Like Fantasticland, this novel explores how fear and instability trickle from the top down. When no one feels safe, people start making desperate, terrible choices just to reclaim a sense of control. It’s not immediate. It creeps in. And by the time anyone notices, it’s already too late.

I’ll be honest—the first half was a bit of a struggle for me. The pacing takes its time. But once the unraveling begins, I was completely locked in. The story is told through a mix of interviews, online posts, transcripts, and voice memos. That kind of format can sometimes feel gimmicky, but Bockoven handles it well. Each voice felt distinct. Nothing came off as cheesy or forced, especially the internet-based content. The structure helped build tension rather than break it.

When it becomes clear how badly everything goes during the March 14th performance of Come Knocking, the book hits its stride. The accounts are intense and often conflicting. One moment you think you understand what happened. Then another voice contradicts it, and suddenly everything shifts. It forces you to stay active as a reader. You’re piecing things together while also questioning your own assumptions.

The themes that stood out most to me were paranoia, helplessness, and the quiet dread that something terrible is coming. That feeling is so familiar—living your life with the sense that disaster is always one step away, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. That emotional undercurrent really stuck with me.

As a follow-up to Fantasticland, this works well. I personally liked Fantasticland more, but Come Knocking never felt like a retread. It builds on similar ideas while exploring them through a different lens. The immersive theater setting adds an eerie theatricality that feels fresh.

My one frustration—and it’s more emotional than critical—is that I still wanted a clearer picture of what happened that night. I kept hoping for a single answer or full reconstruction. I didn’t get that. But maybe that’s the point. This book is soaked in voyeurism. It reflects how we consume horror, grief, and tragedy through filtered, often unreliable lenses. Wanting the “truth” might be missing the bigger question.

Recommended for:
Readers who loved Fantasticland, fans of oral history-style horror, and anyone drawn to stories about the slow, creeping collapse of order. If you don’t mind ambiguity and you’re comfortable sitting in discomfort, Come Knocking will leave a mark.

Come Knocking is presented through interviews with various crew members, performers, attendees, and others. Before these interviews, a disaster occurred during an interactive theatre experience based in LA.

I’ve previously read his other book Fantasticland that was also based on interviews of a disaster. I enjoyed these a lot! It was interesting seeing it all unravel and uncovering what happened at this event. It was different and unique! Every page got a lot more violent and it keeps you on edge wanting to read more.

Thank you to Netgalley for my ARC.

3.25 Stars

This is the story of one violent, tragic night at an interactive theater presentation called Come Knocking. It is told through interviews of people involved at various levels- performers, workers, audience members, first responders, etc. And these interviews are combined into a book written by the fictional interviewer. I read Mike Bockoven's Fantasticland, which uses this same format, so was very excited to get my hands on this book. In fact the fictional interviewer/author are the same in both books. I love that we got a lot of that same voice.

Multiple POV's are one of my favorite story telling methods,, and it was done so well in Fantasticland. Unfortunately, I didn't feel like it worked as well here in Come Knocking. It was not as easy to track the action, or characters within the story and it felt a bit too long to me. The action was slowed down because of the length, so the climax was not as impactful. Despite this, I would still recommend this book to those that enjoyed Fantasticland, and will likely read this author's work in the future as I do like his writing style.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Come Knocking by Mike Bockoven is the story of a mass casualty event told from several different perspectives after the fact, in interview format (along with some thrown in reddit posts). The book starts with interviews that describe Come Knocking, an interactive theater experience in Los Angeles. The first few interviews set the story for what's going on with the show (how it moved from New York to LA, how people feel about it, what kind of experiences there are) with hints of the tragedy that is to follow. Each subsequent interview or reddit post gives more and more detail until the reader is taken to the night of the tragic event that led to the death of more than 100 people and the closing of the show.

Leading up to my reading of Come Knocking I decided to re-read FantasticLand and I wasn't disappointed. I enjoyed it even more than the first time and it really put me in the right mind frame for Come Knocking. One thing that I absolutely love in books is when a writer introduces a mixed media element. Whether it's a podcast, elements of a script, reddit posts doesn't matter, I will eat that right up. And that worked to the book's advantage in Come Knocking. On top of that I'm a sucker for interactive art, museums, and haunts - which is what Come Knocking felt like to me through the descriptions of the performance in the book.

There were a lot of graphic depictions of violence in this book, but nothing that went into full tilt body horror - a place where I'm not usually that comfortable as a reader, so I was able to overlook some of that. Mostly I was just entirely sucked into the story and completely willing to suspend disbelief the whole time I was there.

I also felt that Come Knocking had a higher emotional element to it than FantasticLand and packed a little bit more of a punch. While the events of FantasticLand took place over five weeks, the majority of everything went wrong for Come Knocking in just one night (though the build up to that night was gradual), which made for a really intense build up to the back half of the book. I was on the edge of my seat for this book and found myself anxious to pick it back up to find where it was going. It was absolutely a page-turner and kept me wanting more.

What I will say for certain is that if Come Knocking had ever been a real thing while I lived in Los Angeles I absolutely would have gone to it and probably more than once.

I personally had a blast with Come Knocking. It is similar to Mike Bockoven's other book, Fantasticland, in the sense that it is written through a series of interviews.
Essentially, there is an interactive play on LA, called Come Knocking, and the play ends up having a really bad night.
As the book progresses, you as the reader are able to piece together the events of the night.
I would absolutely recommend checking triggers for this one if you need to. There's some body horror in there amongst other things.
I would say that this book is more plot driven than character driven, and because of that you don't really get to know each character very well. I thought that aspect worked well with the play itself.
The audience members all wear masks so its hard to tell who individuals really are, and not many of the actors/dancers knew one another well either. Just adds to the atmosphere and massive disconnect between the groups of people.

I loved this authors work in Fantasticland, so I was very excited to get my hands on the arc for this new book. It was every bit as enjoyable as Fantasticland, if not more. I loved the premise for this book and thought it was done very well. The pacing was fantastic. I loved the background we got into the performers for the show and thought many of the characters were very relatable. Mike Bockovan is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, and this book was a thrill ride from the first page to the ending. I could not put it down. I highly recommend this to anyone who is a fan of horror or who also read and enjoyed Fantasticland.

Thank you to Netgalley and Skyhorse publishing for providing me this free copy in exchange for my honest review!

Bleak and brutal, this blends documentary metafiction with the psychological horror of mass violence, chaos, and unraveling morality. If you’re looking for something sharp, dark, and disturbingly relevant, this’ll probably stick with you — whether you want it to or not!

Extreme violence warning. After about 50% it’s mostly that and is descriptive.

Energy: Morbid. Fascinating. Pertinent.

🐕 Howls: After 50% we see the same extreme violence just from slightly different perspectives. Not poorly done, just emotionally exhausting at times. Sometimes the interviews knocked me out of the story when characters sounded similar so I mixed them up or when they spoke in a way that didn’t feel true to interview formats (more like a novel).

🐩 Tail Wags: Unsettling because it holds a mirror to humanity and the commentary feels particularly relevant. The documentary-style storytelling. Using interviews to show the mess of justifications, delusions, and lies by omission that led up to the tragedy. How it made me keep asking myself what I’d do in that situation, if I’d go to the show, if I’d like it.

Scene: 🇺🇸 Los Angeles, California, USA
Perspectives: Interviews with multiple characters who were adjacent to the Incident, including attendees, staff, crew, bartenders, actors, protestors, fans, and trolls.
Timeline: After an incident on March 14th (2020s)
Narrative: Listening to characters speaking to us, in-the-dark (epistolary)
Fuel: Exploring dynamics of ‘why we can’t have nice things’, hive mind, and mass violence/hatred. What was the incident? What led up to it? Who was ultimately responsible?
Cred: Hyper-realistic

Mood Reading Match-Up:
‘I didn’t do anything wrong’. Flame thrower. Demon dance. Tickets. Screaming. Fans. Trolls. Mods.
• Folksy, immersive, journalistic writing style
• Interviews with mix of likeable, nasty, rude, self-absorbed, sympathetic, unlikeable, and villainous characters
• Psychological manipulation, paranoia, and jumping to conclusions (first-half)
• Extreme mass murder survival horror (second-half)
• Online & media critique of fandoms, trolls, conspiracy theories
• Documentary style metafiction
• Disturbing, detailed, chaotic violence
• Grim exploration of destruction, hate, hypocrisy, helplessness, societal decay, art, and fragile morality
• Horrific things happen, Heartstring hits, and Humans are the real horror

Content Heads-Up: Alcohol (bars). Bullying (online). Death. Drug use (mention). Entitlement. Fire, smoke, fire injury (recalls; graphic on page; burns). Homophobia (online slurs and comments). Infidelity. Loss of friend. Loss of spouse. Massacre (attack, shooting, targeted and random; manifesto). Murder. Nudity. Racism (bullying). Satanic/occult themes. Sexual assault (in relationship). Sexual harassment. Violence (graphic, on page; physical, stabbing, blood, sabotage, threats).

Rep: American. British. Dutch upbringing. Cis. Hetero. Gay. Brown and ambiguous skin tones.

📚 Format: Advance Reader’s Copy from Skyhorse Publishing and NetGalley

I’m a huge fan of Fantasticland, so I was very excited to read this! It is a very similar story type told in the same manner- an event turning very violent, forcing people to struggle to survive, all due to bad human behavior. It’s told in the same way as Fantasticland, through interviews and other source material.

Overall, I enjoyed this book- but I can’t say it matches the magic of Fantasticland. I wasn’t quite as taken with the “setting” of the play, but I did enjoy the different twist on the type of event and the reason behind it. If you enjoyed Fantasticland, it’s worth a read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!