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Thursday, May 2, 2024

Review: Cursed Cruise by Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren

Author: Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren
Publisher: Underlined
Publication Date: March 2024

 All aboard...

After their fateful stay at the Hearst Hotel, the Ghost Gang is back with more spooks and more subscribers. They’ve been invited to record onboard the RMS Queen Anne, a transatlantic luxury ocean liner with a colorful past of violent deaths of hundreds of passengers—souls that bought a one-way ticket to the afterlife (and never disembarked).

When Chrissy, Chase, Kiki, and Emma board the ship, they have a funny feeling they’ve been sucked into a ghostly time warp—a theory that takes a frightening turn when Chrissy goes missing on the first night.

Unbeknownst to the rest of the group, Chrissy has been sucked into another time by a passenger who wants the Ghost Gang to know her untimely death was not an accident and the perpetrator is still alive—and on board this ship.

Cursed Cruise is the sequel to Horror Hotel.  I thought that was just OK, so I shouldn't have been surprised that this one would be the same.  The story finds the  four ghost hunters getting ready to set sail on a haunted cruise ship.  Do not read this one if you haven't read the first one.  There are some major spoilers here.

I wasn't completely enamored with this second story.  The four have split off into couples and, boy, are we reminded of that fact constantly.  It definitely got old and really was unnecessary.  There are multiple perspectives, even one of the ship herself. Because of the many perspectives, it seemed like there was too much going on supernaturally.  With the many story lines, it felt unfocused.  I hated the explanation for the "evil" on the ship.  It really came out of nowhere and was almost an afterthought.  I would have liked this more had it been more focused.  There were some spooky parts and I did like the PTSD aspect that one of the characters as dealing with from the first book.  It was a quick read and that was to its benefit.


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