"So fasten your seatbelts, unfasten your imagination, ask the person next to you for permission to grab them if things get scary, and get ready to experience the awesome sights of...the Halloween Haunted Forest Tour!"
Have you ever tried to write something based on notes you took two years ago, that you have no recollection of? Because that's what's going on right now. I'm going to try to piece all of this together and hope that I get it right. Is it professional? No. But this is a blog no one knows about, that I created just so I could talk about a bunch of random horror-related things, so I think it's okay.
I was browsing Amazon one night (two years ago) and saw that this book had 300+ reviews (it has more now) with a 4 1/2 star rating, so I decided to read more about it and I was sold on it immediately. The title alone is great, but the plot summary on the back of the book made it sound like Jurassic Park meets Cabin in the Woods. Those are two of my favorite movies of all time, so I couldn't wait to start reading it.
The Haunted Forest Tour (the book, not the actual tour in the book) begins in the town of Cromay, four years ago, where a large tree has suddenly sprouted through a man's porch. Then another appears, from nowhere. And another. Pine trees are sprouting up in the middle of the desert, destroying an entire town and resulting in many casualties.
Our main character is Christopher, a 38 year old divorced workaholic. His mother wins tickets (by having knowledge of horror movie trivia) for them to go to the Haunted Forest Tour on Halloween. The exclusive Halloween tour, not available to the general public. The tour began a year ago, with a track around the forest's perimeter, inside armored trams. The Halloween tour, however, goes through the forest, right in the center of all the monsters who occupy it. Don't worry, though, they have a "100% safety record." (Where have I heard that before?)
I guess at some point, Christopher and the rest of the characters we're introduced to get on the tram for the tour, because the next thing my notes say is "The power for the tram shuts down while all kinds of monsters inch closer to it." That's okay though, we can get right into the action! Instead of being rescued by the next tram taking the tour, it plows right into them at full speed (there goes their 100% safety record). After the monsters eat the tourists in the "secure" tram that came crashing into Christopher's tram, they try to infiltrate that one as well, before the tourists open fire on them. (Good thing they keep weapons on board the trams.) Everyone is forced to evacuate and venture out into the forest.
I have a lot of notes after this, but it's a full on plot summary and I don't really want to spoil the rest of the book, so I'm going to skip over all of that and get to my thoughts. I think everything going to hell happened too early in the book. It would have benefited from developing the characters and company a bit more. Because the majority of the book was about the attack and attempted escape from the forest, it felt like it went on for longer than it should have. It was still a quick, fun read, I never felt myself thinking, "I wish this would end already." But it did seem like it could have been more balanced. Overall, The Haunted Forest Tour was predictable, but enjoyable.
Death Count (Spoilers): More casualties than Jurassic Park, but less than the amount of casualties that probably occurred after Cabin in the Woods' ending.
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