Cursed Cruise

After their horrific encounter at the Hearst Hotel the Ghost Gang now have over a million subscribers, a manager, and more opportunities. When they get invited to take a cruise on the Queen Anne, a ship with a bloodied past but is now a luxury cruise liner, the gang is excited to investigate and get a little vacation while they're at it. However, from the moment they step on the ship strange things start happening and they soon realize this is like no haunting they've experienced and they don't think they're equipped to handle it.

While this is a sequel to Horror Hotel it can be read as a standalone. Though, I do recommend reading Horror Hotel, not only because it's great but because it gives a lot of backstory to the characters and you'll understand a bit more of what they're going through in Cursed Cruise. I love is all of the characters - Emma, Kiki, Chase, and Chrissy are so lovable in their own way and I love the relationship they have with one another. Told from each of theirs perspective you get to really get to know each character and what motivates and scares them.

This is definitely YA! Getting to read from each 18 year olds perspective you also get to read how each character talks. So there is a lot of new slang (for example “sus” is used instead of suspicious). So there is no mistaken that these are young characters and this is a YA book. Which is completely fine, if at times a bit striking for this millennial. One thing I do love is that these characters aren't trying to act or be portrayed older than they are. Many YA characters always seem to act more adult or be put in more adult situations than many adults I know but these characters are portrayed as typical newly graduated from high school 18 year olds which is refreshing.

And, finally, the plot of this story. I LOVE a good haunted ship story and am always sad that there aren't more movies or books on the subject. The perspective of the ship was a nice touch. There were so many cliques throughout and it touched on many of the haunted ship tropes. I enjoyed how each character was having a different experience but there were also collective experiences that made it undeniable that the ship was haunted. And not only haunted but cursed which added an extra layer of mystery. Some of the descriptions are down right terrifying!

If you're looking for a fun (yet creepy), quick read I recommend this!

idek

Normally I'm not a fan of constant pov changes – and when they're in the same chapter – but I didn't find that so annoying here? Plus they're all first person pov and didn't annoy me – which was another win as I often find them annoying. Big kudos to the two authors for managing to pull that off!

Of course when you have an ensemble group it could become difficult to differentiate between their voices and personalities but that didn't seem to be the issues here. All the povs were in first person yet I never really got confused as to whose pov I was reading.

I already knew The Ghost Gang from the previous book but I liked how they took the events from it and made sure it affected them in this book. That they wouldn't forget them (hard to, considering what they'd been through) and it's a good reminder that trauma shows itself in many ways and it's a difficult thing to navigate.

The characters improved in this book and I liked seeing that. Looking back at my review for the first book I said Chrissy was my favourite and Chase, my least. I liked Chase much better this turn around! I said in Horror Hotel that he felt like cared more about the fame and the group. And that I hoped that he would change that in the future. That definitely was the case here! He not only improved as a character (in my eyes); he cared more about the group than their fame (current and any they could get in the future). I liked him more for that. I think for this book Emma and Kiki also improved as characters for me. Actually for this book none of them stood out as a clear favourite? As I liked all of them really well.

I didn't really like Billie, Kiki's mom. Honestly, I didn't really understand why she was on the ship with them. I warmed up to her late into the book but I could've done without her.

I didn't like the whole subplot of the mummy. I thought it was just pushed in there when maybe the editors thought there wasn't enough tension and another subplot needed to be added. We could've had another book with the cursed mummy plot instead of just shoving it into here and not giving it enough space to fully spread its wings.

I liked the other bits of the plots. A ghost haunting of the ship and “oh there's a lady in white wandering the ship” – I loved that. I love haunting stories and they don't get old to me – that is basically what Horror Hotel was too. The Ghost Gang made sure to be respectful to the story, which was good, and solving it was important not only for their Youtube channel.

Even though I didn't like the Paranormal Patrol (also the name is stupid), I did like what they brought to the table. The difference between the two groups, what they both wanted from solving the mystery. How they treated the mystery – respect versus fame. Also how the internet/Hollywood wanted to see them. Like the Ghost Gang are teenagers, why would you push them to sex it up? They're not on Riverdale or Euphoria (most certainly as those teens are played by near 30 year olds).