Wonderland
Books | Fiction / Fantasy / General
4.3
(82)
Jennifer Hillier
Welcome to Wonderland. By day, it’s a magical place boasting a certain retro charm. Excited children, hands sticky with cotton candy, run frenetically from the Giant Octopus ride to the Spinning Sombrero, while the tinkling carnival music of the giant Wonder Wheel—the oldest Ferris wheel in the Pacific Northwest—fills the air. But before daybreak, an eerie feeling descends. Maybe it’s the Clown Museum, home to creepy wax replicas of movie stars and a massive collection of antique porcelain dolls. Or maybe it’s the terrifyingly real House of Horrors. Or…maybe it’s the dead, decaying body left in the midway for all the Wonder Workers to see. Vanessa Castro’s first day as deputy police chief of Seaside, Washington, is off to a bang. The unidentifiable homeless man rotting inside the tiny town’s main tourist attraction is strange enough, but now a teenage employee—whose defiant picture at the top of the Wonder Wheel went viral that same morning—is missing. As the clues in those seemingly disparate crimes lead her down a mysterious shared path of missing persons that goes back decades, she suspects the seedy rumors surrounding the amusement park’s dark history might just be true. She moved to Seaside to escape her own scandalous past, but has she brought her family to the center of an insidious killer’s twisted game? Acclaimed author Jennifer Hillier’s bone-chilling thriller is masterful and fast-paced, hurtling toward a shocking, bloody conclusion.
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More Details:
Author
Jennifer Hillier
Pages
432
Publisher
Simon and Schuster
Published Date
2016-08-27
ISBN
1501157507 9781501157509
Community ReviewsSee all
"⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/4 Jennifer Hillier has risen to top of my favorite thriller author list up there with Gillian Flynn. I never would have read this book because of the cover (hate clowns HATE them 🤡😳😂) but her name was on it so I had too. It’s not her best..but not her best is still better than most! "
"Wonderland is the perfect book for summer with its eerie carnival setting in the fictional town of Seaside, Washington. Gutsy Police Officer Vanessa is looking to escape her past with her two children, 14-year-old Ava and 7-year-old son John-John. Ava, however, has plenty thoughts of her own regarding being forced to leave Seattle and her friends. Though, she, like many others before her, eventually becomes enthralled by the prospect of working a summer job at Seaside’s one and only alluring attraction that brings all the tourists to town en masse: Wonderland amusement park.
But, Wonderland, past its artificially wholesome, All-American image, is nothing like what it seems. There are an exceeding amount of cover-ups going on, especially from the inside, with images and reputations on the line in a small town where gossip travels like wildfire. Tragedy seems to strike just as fast as Blake, a self-proclaimed urban free-climber, climbs the Wonder Wheel at night, eventually tripping and falling, after-hours to boast to his followers the best aesthetic shot and spite the park and its current CEO.
The next day he goes missing in action as spotty, antiquated security footage doesn’t reveal much about his whereabouts or where another additional dead man came from who is found lying on the freeway inside the park.
The book only builds from here as the chapters are action-based and punchy. The characters felt damaged, deeply flawed, and cosmically real. I loved spending time with them in this corrupt town with its severely tainted set of politics. No one is to be trusted and everyone knows a different piece of the puzzle, that they may not be revealing right away, for fear of what its impact could have on their future in the town and among its people. Juicy tidbits are only revealed sparingly and at just the right pace as many seek to save face.
The ambience of the setting was my favorite and I loved just intuitively connecting to this story! "
"Jennifer Hillier is one of the best thriller authors of our time, however, she doesn’t have the notoriety as other authors. Her novel Wonderland was originally released in 2015 as a kindle book and finally it’s being re-released as an audiobook 8 years later. <br/><br/>“Welcome to Wonderland! Or as we like to call it, Funderland! There’s something here for everyone…”<br/><br/>A small corrupt town with a huge amusement park, that was previously shut down due to the owners philandering with his employees reopened with a new local owner. Everything is great until a new Deputy Detective comes into town and is thrown into a political mess as someone is found dead at the park. <br/><br/>The twists and turns keep coming increasing in suspense, which led me to listen to this in one sitting! The audiobook production was amazing and it’s going to be a HUGE summer blockbuster! <br/><br/>Thank you @macmillianaudio for my ALC of this smash hit!"
"Good book. It kept my interest and I loved the characters and their development. I wanted to know more about John John. Many twist and turns which were surprising and gave answers to unanswered questions. Thought I had the antagonist figured out and thought “hmm that was easy, a little too easy”. But there is a surprise twist at the end that no one sees coming."
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