Review: Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

Title: Clown in a Cornfield

Author: Adam Cesare

Publisher: HarperTeen

Publishing Date: August 25th, 2020

Pages: 352 
Audio Length: 7 Hours and 45 Minutes

Genre: YA Horror
TW: Murdering of kids

Series: Standalone

Source: ARC provided by the publisher

 

Quinn Maybrook just wants to make it until graduation. She might not make it to morning.
Quinn and her father moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs to find a fresh start. But ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half. On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can.
Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now.

I am terrified TERRIFIED of clowns. And I love being terrified and I love creepy and I love horror. So of course I had to pick this book up. I did think it was going to be more 80's b list horror instead of... slasher horror? But either way it was terrifying. 



That cover is certainly creepy and matches the book well. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to check it out.



Oh the story. Where do I start with this story? It's creepy. It's scary. It's downright terrifying. As I said I'm terrified of clowns and so the fact that this mass murder happens not only BY clowns but also in a cornfield, which is another thing I'm completely creeped out by.

The only thing that i had a problem with is that I was expecting the "who"and the "why" to be a bit different. It's not necessarily a bad thing that it wasn't what I was expecting, just... different. 



This one does start out a little bit slow. I think it took to about 40% by the time it really started going. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, it built up to the "why" the clowns are attacking. And then once they start attacking it's not slow anymore and I found myself not wanting to stop reading, I just had to know what was going on and what was going to happen.



I think I've mentioned a few times in this review how creepy of a book it is. I think the author did a really good job in writing a very well done and horrifying book. It's creepy to even just think of something like in this book happening and then the author took it and made it feel real. 



I literally only cared about like 3 characters in this book. Quinn was okay, I like Cole, but Rust is my favorite by far. 

Other than that every last one of them got on my nerves and I did not care even a little if they died. 

I did feel like they were written well though, they all had personality and felt as if they were real people.



Let me tell you I could picture the corn maze and being lost in it and I was not okay with that. I mean I was but, I wasn't. Because it made the book and the scary of it that much more real.



Maybe the author was trying to set up for a book 2? I don't know, but the ending was kind of just meh. 



This was definitely a creepy scary read that had me not wanting to put it down.

“Quinn looked to the horizon as the cornstalks swayed with the breeze. The corn itself could have been waving hello, or it could have been breathing.
― Adam Cesare, Clown in a Cornfield

Adam Cesare is a New Yorker who lives in Philadelphia. His books include Clown in a Cornfield, Video Night, The Summer Job, and Zero Lives Remaining. He’s an avid fan of horror cinema and runs Project: Black T-Shirt, a YouTube review show where he takes horror films and pairs them with reading suggestions