Nancy A. Collins

Jeffrey Reddick

An upcoming starlet who is horribly disfigured trying to save her friends is given an unexpected second chance if she will help Death do away with her friends, in a novel based on the characters in the two Final Desination films. Original.

Looks Could Kill

Geoffrey Froggatt

** spoiler alert **
           This is the third Final Destination book that I have read after Final Destination: End of the Line and Final Destination: Dead Reckoning. Content warning for drug abuse, eating disorder, homophobia and gore. A beautiful young fashion model has her entire world torn apart when she foresees the sinking of a chartered yacht. Although she succeeds in saving herself and several fellow models from the disaster, it is at the cost of her highest prized asset: her physical beauty. I liked this initial premise and thought that it had potential. I liked the idea of a protagonist who isn’t your typical ordinary citizen. I liked how all the supermodels were nicknamed after a type of alcohol. I like how this book explores the darker side of the modeling industry. I liked how this book introduces the main cast of characters then immediately gets to the main disaster. I liked the depiction of the yacht disaster, but I didn’t like that there wasn’t any clever foreshadowing moments for the main disaster; the yacht disaster occurs on Pier 13 and on the anniversary of the Flight 180 and Route 23 disasters, and a character feels a cold chill. None of these things are particularly clever and none of the characters would be able to look back on these things as foreshadowing to the disaster. Unfortunately, this book also features an abstract dream sequence, something I wasn’t a fan of in Final Destination: Dead Reckoning. I liked Sherry as a character and protagonist, and I definitely enjoyed the main cast of characters in this book more than I did in Final Destination: Dead Reckoning, and I liked the creative deaths in this book over the ones in that book. While I like when entries in this franchise do new and interesting things with the lore and formula, I wasn’t a fan of the creative decisions made in this novel. I liked the initial concept of Sherry helping Death, but I prefer Death in this franchise to be a supernatural and primordial force, not a being that can take physical form and be communicated with. I didn’t like the idea of a character who physically speaks with Death and makes a deal to be healed and restored by the deaths of others survivors, it was a higher level of supernatural that I didn’t want from this series. I felt like that concept didn’t fit with what makes Final Destination so good as a franchise, and it only gets worse by the end of the novel, where the concept becomes cringy and corny. The last 25% of the book was very disappointing and felt cheap compared to the solid opening premise and the initial storyline, and more importantly, it didn’t feel like a Final Destination story anymore. Even though I wasn’t happy with where this book went, I’m still glad I read it and recommend it for hardcore fans of the Final Destination franchise.

Looks Could Kill

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