Tastes Like Candy: A Slasher Novel

2.5 stars

I saw someone talking about this book not that long ago but now I can't remember who it was. I looked up the book and thought it sounded like something I would enjoy plus I've been trying to read more horror this year and thought this would be perfect. By the time I picked this book up to read I had completely forgotten that it was YA. I actually don't mind YA books, but this one bugged me a little bit. Before we go any further this is probably going to be a little bit spoilery so if you are interested in reading this then I suggest skipping the rest of this review. I buddy read this one with Destiny although she did end up DNFing it early on and I can't blame her because I considered DNFing it several times myself. My first thought while reading this was that it was taking way too long to get to the murder. I was about 45% into before anything started happening. My biggest complaint was the use of drugs. I get that they are teenagers (16-17) and they are going to do stuff like this and experiment but when it comes to books about murder, I don't want to read about drug induced paranoia. I want the real thing. Some of the girls were higher than others so luckily, I didn't have to read through everyone's paranoia, but I did have to read a few, and I hated that. I had an idea who the killer was, and I ended up being correct. I will say the author didn't hold back on the gruesome details which I liked. As for the reasoning for the murder spree it was so freaking ridiculous. Oh, you got canceled on social media and don't know what your future holds after high school, so you are going to kill all your friends because they know what they are going to be doing, please. If this book didn't include the drugs and had a better reasoning for the murders, I could have enjoyed it more. I also have to give the author props for continuously getting me to keep reading. Every time I would be considering DNFing it I would read something that made me want to keep reading. After finishing this and reading the synopsis for the next book I don't think I will be continuing with the next book.

This was a fun book, felt like watching a typical horror teen slasher. The characters were a bit too one dimensional but overall it was a fun read.

3.5 rounded up.

The first part of the book was great but when we got into the meat of the action things got weirdly choppy for a while and I kept backtracking thinking that, surely, I had skipped something. I liked that the story was told at least for part of it from the point of view of someone who was very high. A couple of the kills were good but most were kind of underwhelming. While there are certainly things that bothered me with this book overall I think it was entertaining and I liked that the cover was really well picked for it.