Ah good old Florida. Everything is a bit more wild in the everglades, right?

This book has everything you love if you love cult classics, sci-fi, humor, and all of it wrapped up in one.

If there is one thing I have discovered about Hunter Shea, it is that his books are consistently gory, fun, and well worth the read.
A small town in Florida + a horde of very hungry iguanas = a book straight out of a B movie.
Polo Springs is your typical American small town until it is invaded by hungry aggressive lizards. Honestly, I always get a kick out of Hunter Shea's books because they are very often gory to the point of a bloodbath, hilariously cheesy, and a fast and enjoyable read.

4 Stars!



Hunter Shea is one of the best writers of monster stories in the genre right now. As a fan of monsters, I have come to expect his novels to be full of the B-movie scares that I love about this kind of story. When I saw Jurassic Florida, I knew I had to try this book. The book looked too good to pass up and the fact that it was by Hunter Shea only made it better.



Polo Springs was a quiet little town in Florida. Some would even call it idyllic. The town was not entirely without its problems. It had to deal with hurricanes but the residents were used to that. The local wildlife in the form of small lizards that popped up everywhere were more problematic but still little more than a nuisance to those used to the city’s green residents. This changed when there was an accident on an offshore oil rig that unleashed something primeval on the small town.



As mother nature prepares to unleash her fury on the town with an approaching hurricane, science is set to release something much more dangerous. The chemicals from the oil spill have seeped into the ground and unleashed a horror that has lied dormant since the days of the dinosaurs. The lizards first begin to emerge in waves of the small creatures that have plagued the town for generations. Just as the storm slams the small town, the larger brothers of the lizards begin to emerge from the ground. Centuries earlier, dinosaurs had ruled this land. Polo Springs is about to be torn from the modern world and sent back to a time when reptiles ruled the world. Say goodbye to the United States, Polo Springs, and welcome to Jurassic Florida.



Hunter Shea never fails to bring the action and this novel is no exception. From the outset, Shea begins to ramp up the action while presenting a solid cast of characters. That is not to say the characters are realistic but this is not a book for those looking for realism. As with most of Shea’s novels, this story is more of a B-movie story and as such the characters and the action are over the top and entertaining. Mix some larger than life characters with a hurricane and giant lizards and you get an explosive mix that does not fail to thrill. The story starts with an almost idyllic feel to it with the small-town Florida vibe but it does not take long for Shea to shatter the peace. Once the action starts, the hits just keep coming until the very end.



Jurassic Florida is not my favorite Shea novel but that is not to say it is a bad book. All of the elements of an over-the-top horror thriller are present and the thrills are fast and furious. Shea proves why he is a master at monster novels with all-out action and entertainment. There are plenty of lizards, big and small, to satisfy fans of monsters with the impending doom of a natural disaster thrown in for good measure. There is plenty here to keep the reader occupied and Shea weaves it all together with a deft hand so the book races by. Jurassic Florida is pure adrenaline powered by giant lizards in Shea’s unique voice and is sure to thrill his fans. Readers should not hesitate to grab this book and prepare for some scaly B-movie action.



I would like to thank Kensington Books and NetGalley for this review copy. Jurassic Florida is available now.

These aren't the cute little green iguanas from the TV commercials

A rogue environmental group blows up a huge oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and unleashes havoc on a small Florida town.

What starts as thousands and thousands of small iguanas appearing from underground is soon followed...by their dinosaur-sized parents.

This was another fun creature feature novella by author Shea. Monster lizards, a hurricane, and the small town of Polo Springs, Florida combine for chills and thrills.

I received this book from Kensington Books through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.

Welcome to Polo Springs, Florida!!

First thing to say is don't get attached to ANYONE in this story, save yourself the frustration as people get eaten and thrown about willy-nilly at the whim of the massive fuckin' iguanas!

18 year old mayor Anne (yeah, you heard that right!) is preparing herself and the town for Storm Ramona which is about to hit and you'd think that was enough stress and trauma to deal with until said iguanas start their shenanigans, we see the townsfolk battling both the storm and the iguanas in a blood drenched, gore filled riot of insanity!

I expect nothing less from a Hunter Shea story, I love the mentalness of each of his stories and how each one progresses, just when you think you'd read the weirdest part, bang, you get hit by something even bloody weirder, so very good!!

*Huge thanks to Hunter Shea, Lyrical Underground and NetGalley for this copy which I chose to read and all opinions are my own*

Once the little iguanas start appearing in Polo Springs, Florida, all hell has broken loose, especially since these are only the babies. As a giant hurricane approaches, they are getting bigger, and a lot hungrier, for their human prey! Hunter Shea is a fave author of mine, but perhaps the formula is getting a little old? Only my opinion.

Thank you for the ARC of this title.
I love horror, sci-fi, and a bit of cult humour, so I thought this was right up my street. It was okay. There's some humour and a great premise (giant iguanas? yes please!), but it felt forced in places and the end was extremely abrupt. It was so abrupt that I actually double-checked my e-reader to see if there was an issue with the file.
It was fine. I enjoyed a couple hours of escapism with it, had a few laughs, groaned a few times, and then it was over.

Jurassic Florida was everything I had hoped for and more. Hunter Shea has been my go-to "fun" read since I first discovered him several years ago. I tend to read for different moods, but I always know what I'm getting in to when I open one of his books. The creature feature is one of my favorite sub-genres in horror and Shea is, without a doubt, one of the best authors for this. Giant lizards invading Florida? Yes, please.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I gave up on this about 1/3 way in. It was structured like a thriller, with alternating sections from different viewpoint characters. Unlike a well-written thriller, however, the characters were shallow and trite, ranging from uninteresting to vaguely repugnant. I never got a chance to connect with any of them, so I simply didn't care that their lives were being buried under tons of green lizards. At the point I gave up, almost nothing had happened except various characters noticing the lizards and the lizards disrupting things. One long opening led to exactly nowhere, no plot point, no building tension, no twists or turns, all of which I should have seen in the first 1/4 of the book. Will the story ever go anywhere? A more tenacious reader than me might find out.

The big thing that put me off, however, was the use of colloquialisms in narrative. This can be a wonderful way of coloring and deepening a character, but in this book, the same tone and type of phrases were used for all the characters, male, female, educated, rough-spoken -- no matter whether that character would ever actually think that way. In addition, some of the phrases were so sexist as to be offensive. Again, this might be fine if the character were meant to see the world through the lens of misogyny, but in this case it was haphazard and insensitive. The prose isn't awful, but it's not mindful.

My inner child also prompts me to add: I wanted dinosaurs and I got iguanas.

I had some problems with this book as far as writing style and content. Parts are just not that well written and some of the non-monster related plot is unrealistic, but I mean this is a book where iguanas a) exist all over Florida (they aren't natural to Florida) and b) grow to monstrous size and eat people. But, I mean, the town elects an 18-year-old to be Mayor and people board up their homes for a Cat 1 hurricane and that really bothered me. There's also casual sexism throughout which I think the author intends to be taken as part of the joke of the book but was just kind of gross. Still it was nice to have a lesbian couple just exist. For a monster book there's plenty of gore and the people behave believably for the most part. The ending did leave a little to be desired but also fit the abilities of the characters.

Jurassic Florida by Hunter Shea is fun, cheesy horror in all its glory. Polo Springs , Florida is battening down the hatches, preparing for Hurricane Ramona. And it's not just water the town needs worry about raining down. Green iguanas have overrun the small township, falling from trees, and burrowing through the ground, causing structural damage to sidewalks and buildings. The brazen little bastards have no fear of people, climbing all over them, biting and scratching. According to an exterminator called in to deal with the problem, the beasts are merely babies. If they are the little ones, where are the adults? Polo Springs is about to find out. As the storm rages, they begin to emerge. And feed.

This is just a fun story, and a perfect beachside read! I finished it in a single sitting! Once the big mama-jamas emerged to feed, the campy gorefest started, with a person even being squished by a car. No-one is safe. The ending was amusing as hell, sticking with the absurdity of gargantuan iguanas. This is most definitely a plot driven story, so there isn't too much in the way of character development, which was a good thing, for me at least! I learned quick not to get too attached to any of the main characters, though my favourite did manage to survive.

I admit, I really liked the main characters, and would have liked to know more about them. What went wrong with Frank? Why was he out in boondocks Florida? What made Ann run for mayor, and how did such a young person get elected? Why did the Earth Matters group think blowing an oil line would help the environment instead of causing untold of ecological damage.

Read my review for Shea'sThe Jersey Devil.
https://wp.me/p6C2DX-gb

***Many thanks to Netgalley/ Silver Dagger Tours, Kensington Books, and the author for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This was a fun ride. I was sucked in immediately and couldn't put it down. I loved the build from the small lizards to the earth-shaking larger ones. I was worried at the beginning that I might not be able to develop attachments to the characters by the time the demolishing happened but noooo, I was screaming through the rest of the book and was heartbroken when some people became lunch. Yes, this was crazy and over the top but it was exciting and a really fun read.

Loved this book. Went straight online to look for more. Well written and interesting all the way through. Perfect length for a good read. Will keep getting books from this author.

Do you remember how many Hammer films started with a series of small innocuous events that just started building piece by piece into a sense of dread? Well that is how it started for Polo Springs, Florida. There had always been a number of green iguanas around, but now they were swarming everywhere, raining out of trees on people, and undermining sidewalks and tearing up lawns. Ann Hickok, the 18-year-old mayor had the lizards to deal with along with Hurricane Ramona barrelling down the town. And according to the exterminator she had just talked to, the lizards were just babies. What would happen when the mommies and daddies surfaced? Would anyone survive the monster iguanas? Well, what are you waiting for? You mean you haven't finished yet?

This was an odd book. It was very short, very graphic, and almost seemed like the script for a sci-fi channel B movie. I would have liked more to it!

Jurassic, Florida
Hunter Shea: One Size Eats All #1
Hunter Shea
Lyrical Press/Kensington, June 2018
ISBN 978-1-5161-0793-3
Ebook

LOL, I’m still chuckling over this book and I have only myself to blame for not having indulged in Hunter Shea‘s work before. Polo Springs, Florida, is a quiet little place but people are starting to notice that the lizard population, specifically small iguanas, seems to be popping up everywhere. Not just popping up—slithering and scampering and the little beasts apparently have lost all fear. Not so the humans in this town, folks like Frank who’s running from the mob and Ann Hickok, the very unlikely mayor who’s only 18 years old. Everyone in Polo Springs has stepped into their own Godzilla movie and the future’s looking very, very dim.

Polo Springs is about to get a rude awakening and they’ll wish they had those little iguanas back. In scenes that are alternately grisly and scream-inducing but also high camp, we learn the answer to the question: can anyone save this town from the invasion of giant people-eating critters?

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, July 2018.

The nitty-gritty: Full of blatant, over-the-top horror, Hunter Shea’s latest is just what I needed for a quick, summertime read.

After reading numerous rave reviews from fellow bloggers Barb and Stormi, I knew I had to try a Hunter Shea book. And Jurassic, Florida was pretty much what I expected: lots of fun, tons of carnage, and plenty of over-the-top action, all of which takes place in a novella-sized story that doesn’t waste too much time with deep characterization or emotional build-up. And that was perfectly fine with me. This is the type of story you grab when you need a fun, fast read. It doesn’t matter that the story is completely ridiculous at times, and I have to admit that I laughed and grimaced in equal measure throughout the story.

You get the gist of what this is about from the cover, but I’ll set the stage for you anyway. The small Florida town of Polo Springs is suddenly being overrun by hundreds of tiny, green iguanas that pour out of holes in the ground in droves, fall from the trees, and wreak havoc everywhere they go. They’re mostly a nuisance, until they start biting people. And then, the giant lizards appear, and no one in Polo Springs is safe.

That’s probably the shortest blurb I’ve ever written, but that’s part of the charm of this story. There isn’t much to the plot, but it’s the outrageous horror and absurd action that make this so readable. Shea populates his story with a quirky bunch of characters who are all in the path of the giant iguanas. There’s Frank Ferrante, a criminal on the run who is hiding out on the beach and the abandoned buildings in town. We’re not really sure what Frank’s running from—my thought was he’s in trouble with the Italian Mafia—but we find out early on that he watched his brother Tony being fed to an alligator—yikes! We also have Nicole and Cheryl, a gay couple who are tending their vegetable garden when they discover that the lizards have destroyed their crop of tomatoes; Don Hendricks and his wife and son Gary; and Ann, the young, eighteen-year-old mayor of Polo Springs who is about to realize how hard her job really is.

Shea jumps right into the action with very little prelude, and before you know it the whole town is in danger of being crushed or eaten by the giant monsters. We never really get answers about why the lizards are bursting up through the ground and attacking people, although there is mention of an off-shore oil rig accident that may have affected their subterranean slumber, forcing them out into the open. There’s very little in the way of character development, which is actually a good thing because most of the characters end up as lizard food anyway. The author does spend some time in Ann’s head, showing the challenges she has as a teenaged mayor who is now responsible for the horrors unfolding in her town. But I’ll admit I spent most of Ann’s page time trying to wrap my head around why a teenager would want to run for major in the first place, and why the residents of Polo Springs would want to elect one!

There’s plenty of gore for horror lovers who love that kind of thing (and admittedly, I thought it was well done and completely relevant for this type of story), so if you don’t like reading about bodies being crushed or decapitated, perhaps you should look elsewhere for entertainment. Jurassic, Florida doesn’t have (or need) deep themes or metaphors, but it sure was a fun way to pass a couple of reading hours. Also, I’m pretty sure I won’t be visiting Florida any time soon.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.

I devoured this book in one day (pun intended) and had tons of fun while doing it. Shea has a way with creatures and someone in Hollywood, pay attention and option some of these for movies. Especially summer creature-features!

So the town of Polo Springs has a problem and while they initially just think they are being overrun by small lizards, they soon learn they have a giant problem- a giant iguana problem. Add to it a hurricane on the way and a pretty competent 18 year-year-old mayor trying to save the town and you have a fun romp called "Jurassic Florida."

Shea always manages to amuse me and I have a soft spot for his titles. In fact, whenever I see new ones coming out, I start stalking Netgalley trying to get my hands on the latest as soon as possible. This book is novella length and my only complaint is the abrupt ending - I could have thoroughly enjoyed a much longer book. However, I already have his next release "Rattus New Yorkus" on my TBR so I have something more to satisfy my creature feature urge. If you want an "out-of-the-box" summer read, grab "Jurassic Florida" now!

Let me start this review off by saying that I'm a big fan of Hunter Shea. The guy has made his bread and butter by putting out high-quality creature features. With the amount of work this guy has published in the last few years, even Rembrandt has to stumble once in a while. Jurassic, Florida feels like Hunter's misstep. The writing is good. The characters are decent. The content was the problem for me. In a quasi-homage to Jurassic Park and Godzilla B-movies, JF comes off as hokie. The story felt like it was trying to play it serious, but I simply couldn't get into iguanas the size of buildings that happened to find their way to the earth's surface after an oil well explosion rocks the Gulf. I don't have to have all the answers to the Hows and Whys, but this one insulted my suspension of disbelief a little too much. Now, if the premise sounds like it might be right up your alley and you can overlook the "realism", by all means, jump into it. Hunter knows how to construct character and dialogue with the best of them. But, alas, Jurassic, Florida wasn't for me.


2 1/2 Bus-Sized People Eaters out of 5


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Another fun creature feature from Hunter Shea!

It starts out letting us know about a bunch of radicals who blows up an oil rig near florida and so I am guessing it's what has the iguana's stirred up.

We get to follow the POV of several different characters but one of the main ones is Frank. You find out at the beginning that he has gotten himself into something really bad as his friend was fed to an alligator (no spoiler that is page one). So he is on the run as he doesn't want to end up gator food and you would think Florida would be a great place to go, wrong.

Polo Springs is a small town with an 18 year old mayor and I wasn't sure about that at first but she goes through a lot and I came to admire her. The town seems to be filled with a lot of small iguanas and Amy is not really sure what to do about it so she calls an exterminator to come in and take a look. She was literally attacked by a bunch of them that fell out of a tree. Everyone is being attacked by them, instead of running from humans they tend to run towards them. There has also been a lot of large holes and other things happening and the exterminator tells her that those little ones didn't do that, they would have to be bigger but he wasn't sure how big.

There is a hurricane a coming and everyone is trying to take cover from that when all of a sudden it feels like an earthquake hits in some spots and out comes some man eating very large Iguanas and boy are they hungry!! Nobody is safe in Polo Springs!

In true Shea fashion we have a fun horror with lots of gore and I really enjoyed it. You learned not to get to attached to anyone because they were fair game and could get eaten. Two things that bothered me and that was that I just didn't feel that it was explained well enough why there are these large iguana's coming up from the ground eating everyone and I thought the end happened to quickly and then it was kind of like bam end of story, it was to abrupt. It didn't really hinder the fun of reading the story but I wanted to put my complaint in there...lol.

If you love creature features then you really should try this as it was just a lot of fun and it's a quick read.