Review: The Reyes Incident

2 stars. Hmmm. Am I missing something? Entertaining enough, and easy to understand, but this novella - though a fairly well-told story - packs absolutely zero punches. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood (pregnant and grumpy), or maybe it focused on the wrong things (off-kilter romances), or maybe it just wasn't scary at all (though tense, at parts!). Or maybe it needed to be longer? 

A group of urbex YouTubers venture into an old military bunker in the middle of a forest and encounter a group of sirens. AKA evil mermaids. These creatures stalk them, hunt them, and eat them, picking them off one-by-one. The survivor, a young woman named Olivia Reyes, manages to escape and make her way to a police station, where she's interviewed by a Sergeant with personal problems - and a personal stake - of her own.

A couple of things, in addition to the stuff I mentioned above: the sirens/evil mermaids - although it sounds like they looked really cool - were not intimidating or scary at all. Their names were extremely silly. I think some of the more emotional parts (scenes of grief, angst, break-ups, declarations of love) would've been more effective had we known the characters for longer. Speaking of, the characters themselves acted so weird. And the timing/pacing was off. I guarantee the police would've held that girl until her statement was done. One night. Boom.

A great idea for a vignette, like a monster-of-the-week episode of X-Files or something (though Scully would've pegged the real killer immediately), but ultimately not a hit for me.

The Reyes Incident on: Amazon | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph