2,5 STARS
Didn't finish this book, my mental health asked me to stop reading this. Let's start with talking about the F-Word in the literal first page, that was already a red flag. The book continued with disinformation about a lot of community (except the Wiccas) which i found really bad taste. The plot is very intresting but everything gets ruined by the disinformation and I didn't want to continue.
Such a pity!

I wanted to like it yet it felt weak because the main thing so the bullying was completely out of time, it would've worked better if it was in an earlier time period but for now it wasn't credible for me almost in stereotype. Nodody is bullied for liking comics anymore, it's popular.
The plot was simple, the characters maybe a bit too simple, it was predictable but it was fun to read a comics style book narrative with super heroes
It is nice to read for an afternoon

It isn't bad at all but reads a little younger than I was expecting. Great for a lower age group I think.

Thanks to Netgalley and Imbrifex Books for this copy of Freaks by Brett Riley to review. This book is out March 2022 and I would definitely keep an eye out for it.
Freaks is about a group of friends who have been bullied for years by the same three people and what happens when they are LARPing and cast a spell from a book found hidden in an old chest and all that follows. Of course their main antagonist gets caught up in the spell casting too and that gives them all something in common when they find they now have super powers.
But what have they done? What have they unleashed in their town?
This book was in some ways very much what I was expecting after reading the blurb, it’s my kind of book for sure. But it also really surprised me with some things that happened, I’m not sure why but there were definitely some “Did that really just happen?!” moments.
Most of the characters have issues, which is kind of expected really. How would you deal with getting super powers after years of being bullied? I’m interested in how they get on in future books.

An interesting read and take on the superhero story. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves marvel or comic books.

Freaks is about a group of four geeks who have been bullied for as long as they can remember. Micah can’t take it anymore and is on the verge of snapping. After finding some old and mystical looking books and robes in a chest in his shed, Micah invites his friends around to play a game, pretending they are going to put a spell on their bullies. Instead they open a portal to another dimension, letting through a horrible Vampire-like being and in the process they gain powers of their own.

I really enjoyed this book. It starts with each of the main characters getting a solo chapter giving a brief introduction and showing them getting bullied. It felt incredibly real and brought back some memories that I had forgotten about. Since starting this book last week, they have been circling around in my head and I think that just goes to show how well-written this book is.

I like superhero stories and I like horror and this mixes them well together. When the horror starts is brutal and gory in the best way. The superhero stuff also feels good. The big fight towards the end is great and given a long time to breathe.

Micah is the most interesting character. He has been pushed to his limit, bringing a gun to one of his weekly game nights with his friends. The others panic when they see it and try to talk him down, but the rest of his character arc is really well done. It’s a really different take on a superhero and I think it will be really interesting where it goes from here.

This is really easy to read and the pages flew by. The dialogue is punchy the action is great. I do think the middle section of the book is a little weaker than the great opening and action packed ending, but it’s all building to the climax.

I would recommend this to fans of superhero stories, horror and especially fans of Darren Shan. It’s a great read and I’m looking forward to book 2.

Thank you to Imbrifex Books and Netgalley for providing a free e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Freaks by Brett Riley is the perfect mix of comic book superhero and fantasy novel however the heroes aren't a group of well trained, picture ready adults: this time, it's five young teenagers, four of whom are bullied relentlessly by the other. But when a live action role-play goes wrong, all five of them find themselves with much bigger problems on their hands than their latest algebra test.

The story is well paced and the plot holds a lot of promise, with just the right amount of twists and turns to keep the reader on their toes throughout however the characters, unfortunately, are what let this novel down. There is very little dimension to them and, even in the small details we see of their home lives - an unhappy home life, a potential for romance - the characters remain completely un-fleshed out and, as a result, unlikeable.

The second world we are introduced to holds such promise, yet we do not see much of it and only through the eyes of the creature who was grossly underdeveloped. He was, however, the only character I felt myself rooting for.

The deaths are detailed and grizzly, in stark comparison to the otherwise middle grade style of the novel which adds a strange disconnect to the story, making it seem clunky and uncertain at times.

I enjoyed the basic premise of this book: kids with super powers going up against something they themselves accidentally called into this world. The villain was intriguing and kept me wondering about its origin world...
But I think that was what I enjoyed. I'm less sure of the execution. I found myself cheering more for the Go'kan, hoping they'd pick off all of the main characters, whom I kept mixing up. I do not feel like there were several main characters - Gabby and Christian kept blending into each other. The further I got, theore they still looked like bullied kids rather that people who all had their own separate identity. And Kenneth remained "the bullier" rather than someone with character traits. I'm also not quite sure how this is going to work as a series, but that might just be because I'm not super excited about this book. I think it might have been better to simply have resolved everything if the big bad evil (Prince, in this case) is defeated, or keep it open ended to what will happen to this world, because I'm a little scared the other books will just turn out to be very similar to this one.

Really enjoyable. The "superhero" theme was just up my street. Loved the underdog idea.
Really hope there is a freaks 2!!

Four high-school friends suffer daily humiliation at the hands of three bullies. When the friends accidentally open a portal to another dimension, they unintentionally allow terrifying, other-worldly creatures to invade their small Arkansas town. Discovering that they are now endowed with strange superpowers, the four teens dub themselves “Freaks,” the very name their tormentors used to ridicule them. The Freaks must fight to save the lives of family and friends now in mortal peril and thwart a secret government task force that appears to be hunting them.

I was totally sold on the blurb for this book, who doesn’t love an underdog who finally gets their chance, add in a mixture of superhero powers and evil monsters and you have a recipe for success.

I really wanted to LOVE this book but it only fell into the ‘quite like’ category for me. Yes, it was filled with tension and action (and some hecka brutal violent scenes which I loved) but there was just something missing for me.

I felt like I couldn’t fully connect with the characters (I just couldn’t believe in them as much as I wanted to) and this evolved into irritation… they felt like generic stock characters with no real substance and because it was so character driven, the novel then fell flat. I wanted more from the characters, more depth, more grit.

Nevertheless, it was an interesting read/concept and Riley can def create a terrifying monster.

#bookreviewsbymrsc #freaks #brettriley

Thanks to NetGalley and Imbrifex Books for this ARC.
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Unfortunately, Freaks just didn’t do it for me. The cover and the synopsis really intrigued me, and I had high hopes for the story. However, it fell flat. There was a lot of promise from the plot, and I wanted to like the characters. As the book went on, it seemed like they became everything they hated about their bullies.

Freaks is a Middle-Grade book about a group of kids who are bullied and what happens when they get special powers. It started out with the kids stumbling across a trunk full of robes and black art books and then switches to them getting superpowers instead. I found all the characters unlikeable and extremely stereotyped. I found the book slow going and not very well-written, when it switches to the monster narrating chapters it is really clunky. I had high hopes for this one based on the cool cover and the reviews, unfortunately, it did not work for me.

Good news and bad news. I think this is a good story about bullied kids getting superpowers. The bad news is that I didn't like any main character in the book. After awhile, I rooted for the monster to devour every one of them.

There is no law that says the main characters have to be likable. But, they do have to be interesting. The bullied kids were physically and emotionally abused, but they were insulting and belittling to each other, too. They were bored by their teachers, bored by their parents, bored by pretty much everything, and their answer to anything was, "Whatever." Haven't they ever heard the phrase, "A bored person is a boring person?" The most annoying kid was even mad that his poverty-stricken, overworked mother bought him a desktop rather than a laptop computer. Maybe 15-year-olds are bored and mad at everything, but I don't want to read about it.

Honestly, I wanted to start bullying these kids because they weren't even nice to each other. And, the bully friends weren't nice to each other either. And, the Feds weren't nice to each other. Nobody was nice to each other. Just let the monster eat them all.

It's an exciting story, but I couldn't drum up any sympathy for 98% of the characters. Whether bad guys or good guys, they complained, they insulted, they were bored. They set fire to whole bunches of trees! Yikes! Their grammar was horrid, even the one who was college bound. Two more books are coming in the series. I hope the superpowered kids get a little humanity.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for allowing me to review this eARC .

This book in 3 words: Vivid. Uncommon. Grisly.

Well, this one was wild. Bullied kids get their hands on some black magic and unleash some demons. The ritual gives them superpowers and world-saving is a necessity. Swipe for a full synopsis.

One of my favorite aspects of this story is how realistic and tangible it felt. We all know kids can be terrible... to others and even people they like. I thought the author nailed genuine relationships and the characters were fun to read.

This book is dark and delicious in the best way. The author took this book in whatever direction he wanted, and I absolutely loved a lot of the details.

I'm a little unsure of the targeted age group for this story. Our main characters are in the 9th grade but the content is brutal at times, and the writing is smooth and mature. Sounds like it's meant to be for 12-14 year olds, but it's kind of dark, but I enjoyed it. Overall, a solid read.

Freaks explores what happens when bullies push too far. The plot centres on the adventures of a group of teenage misfits, crossing American High School drama with fantasy.

I was expecting Stranger Things lite, but what I got was much more disturbing given the novel's target demographic. The plot, characters and language seemed oddly inappropriate. The characters felt like a checklist of ostensible causes for bullying- sexuality, race, race, religion, fashion- without any further exploration. I would have liked to have seen the characterss devlop as part of their narrative arc and not be defined wholly by the labels they are given at the start of the book. Even better, for them to have been presented as multifaceted people, rather than stereotypes.

Some elements of the description were very effective, but overall the pace was slow, and the plot derivative and unsubtle. I felt that opportunities were missed to explore themes and ideas I'm enough depth to make them engaging. In particular, I found the scene near the start of the book where a character threatens the bullies with a gun uncomfortable in its unnuanced presentation of weapons and gun violence.

I wouldn't recommend this book to young people. There are many more engaging books exploring similar ideas.

I enjoyed this story of outsiders, monsters, and friends. What a great read. Thank you for the e-arc!

Freaks opens its first scene with a kid getting his head dunked into the toilet by his bullies, and let me just preface this review by saying that I have first hand experience with this (being the one getting closely acquainted with the bowl). So already a 12/10 for realism from me here.

A bunch of kids, all bullied nerds, play around with some occult stuff they find in a shed - and accidentally open a portal to... something. In the coming days, they develop superpowers - unfortunately, so does bully number one. Shenanigans and world-saving ensue from here, in a fun romp that reads as if Stranger Things and Ready Player One had been mashed up into one and made into a film by Steven Spielberg.

One thing that did bother me a little was that the book felt overwritten in parts. Scenes and backgrounds were described in extreme detail, without the information actually adding anything to the story. When someone goes to their room, my imagination usually fills in the details - I can infer that the person walked down the corridor and opened the door without having to be told.
Don't get me wrong, the descriptions are good; there is just a lot of them, and it slows the pace down in a story that feels like it should be told in a breathless and fast-paced manner, and I would have appreciated a lighter touch here.
What surprised me was how little of the bullying going on was cyber - I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, and the things described read a lot like what happened to me back then. But I think these days a lot of bullying happens online, and home is no longer a safe place from the bullies, because the internet follow us everywhere.

I'm also not entirely sure what the target demographic of this book is. The protagonists are 14-15, placing it in the YA realm, but the language is bordering on adult in terms of grammatical complexity and vocabulary. Now I haven't been that age or even close to it for a while, so maybe I'm just out of the loop here. But it makes me curious to see what Riley could do in terms of writing outside of the YA genre.

All in all a very fun twist on the superhero story, and I would definitely recommend it to people who love Stranger Things, Marvel and comic-book style narratives.

I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

I got this ARC of of Netgalley, these opinions are my own. I enjoyed this book. I’ve always enjoyed books related to superpowers and I think Brett Riley created on how kids could develop those. I also really enjoyed the nerd developing superpowers angle! Jamie, Michael, Christian, and Gabby were all fun protagonists, not sure how I felt about Kenneth… but maybe he had some redeeming qualities. Overall a really enjoyable book! Excited for this to come out!

Imagine opening to the first page of a book, and you're met with quite the descriptive rundown of a modern day swirly. I have to admit, it's definitely not what I expected. But it DID get my attention. Freaks opens with four different teens; Micah, Jamie, Gabby and Christian. Each of them the subject to relentless bullying from the rest of their classmates. It seemed a little archaic to me, mainly because bullying nowadays seems to be through screens. But at the same time, my attention was rapt to this book.

It's geared towards YOUNG YA, so I kept having to remind myself of that throughout reading this. I'm talking like the 12-14 year old crowd. So while an adult may not be as into this as we are most YA books that are popular right now, I did recommend this to my younger sister.

The plot really gets going when this little band of misfits decide to mess around with Micah's parents old satanic stuff in his backyard. Automatic red flag y'all. (In the best way). Those poor kids must've never watched any horror movie. You NEVER mess with the creepy old dusty stuff that's locked away for a reason. Alas, they all think it's a genius move to CHANT the words in a book, inevitably affecting them all.

Over the next few days, they each develop unique powers, including their bully, Kenneth, who jumped in during the chanting to mess with them. Powers such as super strength, flying, speedy growth, and laser beams shooting out of hands. It really felt as if I was reading a comic, and the many references to Teen Titans was not lost on me.

What I enjoyed most about this book is that Brett Riley really did NOT hold back when it came to the murders in this small town. When I read books at 12ish, it felt like the ones geared specifically towards me were always fluffy or go-lucky. I think audiences in the younger YA group will enjoy the realistic factor he included to make this story flow better.

Because I don't want to spoil what happens, or give any indication to the ending, I'll end my review with this. While I clearly wasn't the audience this was intended for, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. For a short while, I felt I had gone back in time to when I first started out reading, and could grab any book I found. (I legitimately read my way through the entire school library in 6th grade). I applaud Brett Riley in his talent, and look forward to seeing what more work comes from him.