viselik's reviews
234 reviews

This felt more like a romance with paranormal characters than a horror than what I expected. The story was still quite enjoyable and I enjoyed the twists, though I wished it was a bit more horror. I liked how it seemed to have been tagged and advertised. I don't even remember many plot points that happened in the Kat chapters other than one. WAIT THIS WAS OVER FOUR DAYS? Nuh uh, not believe this romance at all now. I read a couple of reviews to help me put my thoughts into words and I hadn't even noticed this as I had assumed it was over several weeks.

The characters felt very flat, even the namesake Headless Horseman was so bland. We learned nothing about him like tell us about what he looks like or anything! Even Kat (oh I so loathe the names of the Katrina hoard I kept getting so confused) felt more like a character than an actual character, I never rooted for her as I didn't understand why for most of her issues.

I was so disappointed with Isadora, I had pointed out in a note I wrote about 50% of the way through which I shall quote "The names do get confusing with all the Katrinas so I have to keep reminding myself who is who. Now thinking of it even the asshole love interest's names are similar to Brom and Blake. Same with the 'main' love interests, Ichabod and Isadora." I so wish Isadora wasn't involved in this damn mess of a village and she was truly a newcomer to the town. I stopped even caring for her after the twist.

For the Headless Horseman, which you know the book was named after, to only be introduced in the last 100 pages really annoyed me. I have seen this was also like this in the original material but those weren't named after him. All this book has done has made me want to read the actual story of Sleepy Hollow.

I'm still confused.

This book hooked me from the get-go. The twists were also well done, they were well foreshadowed and I hadn't expected several of them. The fact that it brought up the double standard of how female serial killers compared to male ones are treated in media really hit the spot for me, as did some of the double standards in relationships. I enjoyed both main characters, and I deeply felt for Ro in the situation she was in and felt bad for her at the end.

Rating: 2.5 Stars
The stories within this book were quite thought-provoking, though I did enjoy them, or well most of them. There is quite a variety of stories within the book, I deeply enjoyed the first two but by the end, I think I just felt confused as all the stories were just so different and I couldn't find a narrative plotline or theme between them all personally. Or I didn't get behind the characters.

I feel this book could be deeply enjoyed by a different reader and there could be a community for this book, but for me this was just confusing. Thinking more about this book, I felt more confused about more stories than ones I understood and enjoyed.

Access to the ARC was acquired thanks to NetGalley in exchange for an honest review even if I got to it so late.

I'm not sure how I feel about this book, by itself I was bored out of my mind during a good chunk of it. I think my already knowing about the whole big twist about Charlie impacted how I felt about this book (and I think that any fans of the FNAF franchise will struggle to go into these books without knowing things about them if you've been involved in the fandom at all). I didn't know everything, like the thing about Ella surprised me. Still, I knew enough that I could put everything together well before I think this book expected you to.

In part of this trilogy I feel this is the weakest one, the first one had several plot points that surprised me and was just a pleasant read. It didn't fall into the 'kill side characters left and right' issue I felt it might have (something this book did and I think this also made me dislike this book). The second book heavily revolved around the Twisted Animatronics who even though I knew a lot about I also deeply enjoyed, and the whole having people be killed randomly didn't bother me as it had a reason to me (something I don't think this book had. I don't get the reasoning for several of the character deaths and or near deaths). The Twisted Animatronics were also brand new for this book so they were something to learn about we didn't already know if you are a fan of the franchise, the Fourth Closet revolved around the Sister Location and Toy animatronics so we learned nothing new about them that we didn't already know about.

I think the only thing preventing me from giving lower than a three-star is that I enjoyed the side characters and I deeply enjoyed how the books portrayed Henry. This series I'm pretty sure is the most we ever get to learn about Henry so far in the entire series and he is a character I am very curious about due to how little he is shown compared to William Afton (or as he is called in this trilogy Dave). I had considered to DNF the book around the 34% mark and I had that thought several more times throughout the book but I had forced myself to continue.

We gotta build a lava field of kettles.