Book Review: Wildlife Reckoning by Jeff Menapace

Life in the swamp just got wilder... "The Swamp Massacre." That's what the media dubbed it. A family on a boat tour through the Florida Everglades. Abducted by the infamous Roy family. Forced to endure hell. Five years later, an aspiring filmmaker and her friends are keen on making a documentary about the incident. To venture into the isolated wilds of the Everglades in hopes of capturing footage that will stun the world silent. They're going to get their wish. Unfortunately. In this terrifying follow-up to the critically acclaimed Wildlife, Wildlife: Reckoning plunges us deeper into the darkest corners of the swamp...and reminds us that man is the deadliest animal of all.

My Review:
***this book contains spoilers for book one***
 
This book is the follow up to the book Wildlife and continues the story several years on. A group of film makers are doing an investigative documentary on the original Roy family murders, and are trying to talk to people in the area to get a different insight. Group leader Stacey thinks she has located where the real Roy house is, rather than the easier to reach one that is presented to the tourists to visit. The team need someone local to show them to the house but when they accidently choose a Roy family member to take them, they will soon be subjected to terror on a whole new level.

The book begins with what happened to two of the characters who survived the first book. Tucker agreed to go to prison on the condition that his son Travis was sent to a good posh boarding school and looked after to give him a chance at a new life. However Tucker was conned by his legal team and the authorities, who sent his son to the notorious boys home where rape, humiliation and torture are the order of the day. Tucker is about to find out what happened to his only child and Travis is no longer the stupid child that caused a war. He is out to get revenge on everyone who he feels has wronged him and has become the most dangerous Roy of all.

Out in the swamp lives the extended Roy family led by Cooper Roy with daughter Trudy, son-in-law Wayne and their daughter Darla. They are about to 'welcome' two other members of the other Roy family to their home and decide to celebrate with a special games night where they capture people to use in a series of deadly games and the family can bet on who survives and dies. Tonight, when the documentary team meet the Roys, the crew will have a starring role in the entertainment. But even amongst a twisted family like the Roys there is little harmony and a lot of tension and angst.

I enjoyed the first book which featured one small lie causing a war between two families which left several people dead. This book features a different Roy family who are even more dangerous, as they don't wait for a legitimate reason to torture and kill people, instead doing it for entertainment when they are bored. Young Darla is a complete psychopath that I wanted to strangle throughout the book! She really drove me mad. I liked seeing the different extended Roy family and their twisted ideas, and the issues that they had with other.  

The games were great fun to read about. The unlucky victims are put into a series of challenges, sometimes an individual being tested against a gator, or all of them in a scary last person standing challenge where it takes luck and skill to survive. As the twisted Roys bet on their performances, the survivors in each game have to find a way to use their head and get out of the mess that they are in. I enjoyed the plot and the characters were interesting enough to read about in the context of a twisted family tortures innocents kind of way. You are never quite sure what game is coming next and it makes me want to stay far away from swamps!

The two Wildlife books were the first experience of the work of this author but they won't be the last. I have already bought the first book in the Bad Games series which has a similar type of plot and I look forward to reading that at some point. 

Read October 2018.
4 stars.