Book Review: Jurassic Florida by Hunter Shea

FLORIDA. IT’S WHERE YOU GO TO DIE.
Welcome to Polo Springs, a sleepy little town on Florida’s Gulf Coast. It’s a great place to live—if you don’t mind the hurricanes. Or the flooding. Or the unusual wildlife . . .

IGUANAS. THEY’RE EVERYWHERE.
Maybe it’s the weather. But the whole town is overrun with the little green bastards this year. They’re causing a lot of damage. They’re eating everything in sight. And they’re just the babies . . .

HUMANS. THEY’RE WHAT’S FOR DINNER.
The mayor wants to address the iguana problem. But when Hurricane Ramona slams the coast, the town has a bigger problem on their hands. Bigger iguanas. Bigger than a double-wide. Unleashed by the storm, this razor-toothed horde of prehistoric predators rises up from the depths—and descends on the town like retirees at an early bird special. Except humans are on the menu. And it’s all you can eat . . .

My Review:
Anyone who has followed my blog during the last year or so will know that I'm a huge fun of both Hunter Shea and creature feature books. I love anything dinosaur and giant iguanas are pretty close to it, so I really expected to love this book. Now don't get me wrong, I liked it but I didn't love it as I expected to.

The plot was certainly interesting enough. An environmental group has for some stupid reason blown up an oil rig, killing workers and polluting the sea which destroys the ecosystem. At the same time, lizards and iguanas are completely over-running a Florida town to the disgust of locals and visitors alike. The beasties are everywhere and growing in both size and number as a hurricane is headed in their direction. It is when the giant iguanas start breaking out of the ground and going on a killing rampage that the town finally finds out what scary is.

I liked the giant iguanas who were running around the town like mad T Rex's, flattening houses, destroying cars and eating people, while the smaller ones go around in swarms like the compys, attacking whatever they can find. It's not safe to stay indoors as your house might crush you or a giant iguana might pluck you out of it to use as a buffet snack. It isn't safe to try and get in your car and leave because these big monsters are destroying cardrs at will and the hurricane is cutting off the escape route. There is certainly plenty of death and disaster in this book so I had no issues at all with the actual plot for the book.

I think it was the characters and their stories that I partly had an issue with. There were some that were interesting enough like newly engaged Cheryl and Nicole who had to flee their house when the vegetable garden was destroyed by lizards. I liked them both as characters and certainly was interested in what happened to them. Sam was my favourite character. He was the somewhat prepared person, ready for the hurricane and ready to help his friends and neighbours when they were in need. He just wasn't ready for iguanas but hey, who would be? I liked these people but I had issues with others. I found Ann particularly annoying. She was a somewhat ditzy 18 year old who somehow had got elected Mayor and seemed to have little clue how to look after the interests of the town. She is getting endless calls about the lizards but only manages to get one caught in her hair, fall over and break her ankle. 

Then there is Frank who is sleeping rough in the town, obsessing over how Tony was recently fed to an alligator. To be honest, the bits and pieces of his story interested me as much as Ann did. I didn't greatly care why Tony was a gator snack or what Frank was running from. I just didn't find him interesting as an MC as I wasn't caring much about a mobster in hiding from other mobsters. I'd rather we had spent more time with Sam. Likewise Don, Barbara and their son Gary who recently lost his spleen after a bike accident. There was a lot about how they were going to sue because he was injured by a paving stone out of place. I wasn't really caring one way or the other about them but it did puzzle me why they waited so long to try and get out of town with a child and a hurricane! I felt most of the characters were pretty forgetable and I wasn't bothered about most of them.

There was just something lacking in this. When everyone was on the streets fleeing the monsters, I expected to find that really exciting but for me it all lacked a bit of cohesion. OK people do panic in circumstances like that but nobody seemed to have a clear idea of what to do so they end up running away then running back towards the monsters and getting eaten. That just felt a bit pointless to me and too many stupid decisions got frustrating rather than entertaining. Why was nobody heading to the shelter before the iguana attack began? Why was the town not evacuated before the hurricane? Why did they elect Ann??? Even the writing itself wasn't quite as riveting as his other books so overall I felt this was one of the lesser Shea books I've read.

Overall a decent enough read to pass the time but I wouldn't rush to read it again if I'm being honest. When I was rating this I was on the border of 2.5 or 3 stars and I'm still struggling a bit to decide. I went with 3 because it was better than Fury of the Orcas!

Read June 2018.
3 stars.