Full of horrific and gory scares
Thank you so much to TBR and Beyond Tours and Steven Dos Santos for allowing me to be part of this experience and also providing me with a complimentary eCopy and media kit!
Book Information
Publishing Date: June 4, 2024
Four friends, three days, two lovers, and one very haunted theme park
On a stormy Halloween weekend, Ray enlists his best friends Joaquin, Sofia, and Isabella to help him make a documentary of Malicia, the abandoned theme park off the coast of the Dominican Republic where his mother and brother died in a mass killing thirteen years ago.
But what should be an easy weekend trip quickly turns into something darker because all four friends have come to Malicia for their own
Ray has come to Malicia to find out the truth of the massacre that destroyed his family. Isabella has come to make art out of Ray’s tragedy for her own personal gain. Sofia has come to support her friends in one last adventure before she goes to med school. Joaquin already knows the truth of the Malicia Massacre and he has come to betray his crush Ray to the evil that made the park possible.
With an impending hurricane and horrors around every corner, they all struggle to face the deadly storm and their own inner demons. But the deadliest evil of all is the ancient malignant presence on the island.
Content Warning: death, grief, murder
Book Links
- Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65212883
- Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/Malicia-Steven-dos-Santos/dp/1645677877/
- Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/malicia-steven-dos-santos/1142827271
- IndieBound: https://bookshop.org/p/books/malicia-steven-dos-santos/19489688
About the Authors
Steven dos Santos is author of THE TORCH KEEPER novels, a Young Adult Post-Apocalyptic series. Book One, THE CULLING, was released by FLUX Books in March of 2013, and named an American Library Association 2014 Rainbow List Top Ten Selection. Book Two, THE SOWING, was released on March 8, 2014. Steven is currently finalizing Book 3 of The Torch Keeper series, THE RAISING. His new novel, DAGGER, a Young Adult Paranormal Espionage Adventure, was released by Evernight Teen in September 2015! Steven is a Team Member of We Need Diverse Books and is represented by literary agent, Lynnette Novak of The Seymour Agency. Steven graduated from Florida International University with a B.S. Degree from the School of Journalism and Mass Communications Television Broadcasting program and also has an MFA in Writing from Spalding University. He is an adjunct English Professor and a passionate advocate of LGBTQ+ rights.
Author Links:
- Website: http://stevendossantos.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/StevendosSantos
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steven_dos_santos_author
- Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65212883
Review (no spoilers)
If you’d like to follow along with the rest of the tour, you can find the tour schedule here.
Another review where I’m somehow still sick!
I’ve read a lot of young adult horrors and let me tell you, this book is a horror horror. It does not shy away from trying to scary the living daylights out of its readers and is full of demonic influences, death, and gore/body horror. This would honestly be a great October read for people who like to read spooky stories around that time. It definitely hit that type of scary-itch for me.
Malicia is a book told from four points of view about four teenagers who travel to a defunct amusement part to investigate what it looks like in the aftermath of a massacre that happened 13 years ago. With each person traveling to the island for their own nefarious reasons, none of them are prepared with what they are about to face once they arrive. The force that killed all those people years ago is alive and thriving…and it’s back for more.
The book is incredibly fast-paced with action happening basically on every single page, so it will definitely keep you hooked once you start. This is something that I felt actually hindered it at certain points because sometimes things were being revealed way too quickly . For instance, the blurb of the book itself gives away the reasons behind each character’s decision to travel to Malicia, which I don’t think was at all necessary. There were chapters where it felt like the characters were just randomly revealing information for no real reason other than to unnecessarily tell the reader something that we could have just learned later on.
The plot deals with a mixture of themes and topics such as demonic pacts/curses, possession, trauma, murder, suicide, and reanimated corpses/ghosts. Each character has their own individual experiences and pasts that they bring to the table, and the voices were distinct enough to not get their chapters mixed up with each other. One main driving factor was the relationship between these four and how strong it remains even when they’re falling apart and betraying each other, which I thought was quite beautiful.
Something that I do want to mention to anyone interested in reading this is that it is definitely oriented towards an audience that is familiar with Spanish words/phrases. I’m usually totally fine with this because it happens with other languages in other books frequently (e.g. Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie novels), but I felt like this one went a bit too hard without providing enough context for non-Spanish speakers like me. It didn’t take away from me being able to understand what was going on, but it did make me feel like I was missing out on certain pieces of the story (especially when the translation feature I was using didn’t work).
If you’re someone who loves the more gruesome horrors available on market, definitely check this one out. You’re in for a wild ride.
Jenjenreviews 