Birthday Bash Book Review: “The Reyes Incident” by Briana Morgan
Welcome to our 2nd Annual Birthday Bash as Divination Hollow Reviews!
We’ll be celebrating all month long with a series of posts by our team and esteemed colleagues and this year’s theme is “Going to the Movies!” Join us as we share themed content with special “tickets” for each category inspired by cinema.
Celebrate with us!
The Reyes Incident
By Briana Morgan
This was so fun!! I love anything horror-related involving mermaids or sirens, so when I read the synopsis of this one, I just knew I'd want to read it. I've previously read some of Briana Morgan's short fiction & always enjoy that, so I was really looking forward to this.
My favorite parts were the scenes in the actual bunker! I loved the mermaids, and I liked the gory bits & death scenes a lot. The idea of the military experimenting on creatures we think are make believe in order to weaponize them is such a cool concept - honestly, I just love stories where "monsters" are in containment and then fight back, sort of like a Cabin in the Woods scenario. It's my jam!! This felt very much like that, although I do have some small notes that I wish the area inside had been built up more in descriptions because I found it a little difficult to picture some of it. There was one point where a plane appears in a... room? Area? I wasn't sure what kind of plane it was, like a full-sized actual plane, or is it a smaller model...? Some things like this confused me a bit and I had to go back and try rereading to fully figure out what was happening. That could totally be on me though, my brain sometimes has a hard time with "picturing" the stuff I read, so it usually has to be VERY DESCRIPTIVE - didn't detract anything ratings wise but did want to just mention it!
Story wise, I found the police bits a bit more difficult for me to stay invested in, mostly because there was this sort of insta-love romantic subplot that I personally found I didn't enjoy at all. I love mixing romance and horror, but here, I don't know - the most emotionally invested I felt was during a particularly difficult scene between one of the MCs and her wife; that felt real and sad. The love bits just didn't feel as genuine to me; they had me questioning the MC's choices and finding it really hard to relate to her or anything she did. I'm not saying it's totally impossible or anything, I just didn't relate & it felt sort of like witnessing a character's midlife crisis; I was uncomfortable and kept wanting someone to step in and try to talk sense into Andie!
I really enjoyed the friendships between the characters in Liv's portion of the story, and sort of wish more of the book just focused on them - their urban exploration adventures, etc. I know that's sort of been done a bit in horror, but I honestly never get tired of it, haha. I used to get into similar shenanigans as a teen with friends, often going into places we should not have been, and have had a few weird experiences myself - I was hoping for a bit more on that here & would absolutely read a whole book about a team of those kinds of explorers going into other buildings if the author decided to write that as a series or something!
The ending was a bit too abrupt for me, especially with how many other loose ties didn't get resolved, or how many other things were never explained or detailed. I had more questions than answers, and I am the type of reader that prefers a tidy ending - not everyone feels the same way and that's absolutely okay!! But that's why I'm giving this 4.5 instead of 5, because I legitimately thought my copy ended wrong or something - I was like, wait, what? It's over?! I need to know more!
Overall, this was a quick & fun summer read that I'd recommend for fellow fans of sirens / aquatic creature type horror books!
Review by Cassie Daley
Website: letsgetgalactic.com
Etsy: Lets Get Galactic
Twitter: @CtrlAltCassie
