Thank you, HarperCollins Children's Books. for allowing me to read Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives eary!

I really, really, REALLY adored Cesare's young adult debut, so I was extremely happy when I got the email notifying me that I had been approved for its sequel. Catapulted again in this horrifying (in all the best ways) story, I couldn't put the book down for even one second, changing rapidly my devices so that I would never be without these words under my alert eyes.

The first book in the series was bonkers. The twist came out of nowhere. So imagine my surprise that they'd do a sequel. Frankly, Cesare nailed it. I wasn't expecting where it went and it was satisfying.

The best part of Cesare's writing is he actually develops characters. Many horror and teen authors fail at this, but here you're invested. The ending isn't obvious and even if you guess one thing, there's plenty more.

Super huge thanks to netgalley for the eARC (in exchange for my honest review of course) because I was SO EXCITED FOR THIS!

Okay, anyone who knows me knows that I am a self proclaimed horror whore. Love love love all things spooky. Live and die by the Ghostface. When I read Clown in a Cornfield I wasn't expecting very much because I haven't had the pleasure to read very much horror that felt like a slasher film, but hot dang if Adam Cesare didn't stab me right in the screamies. Surely he couldn't pull that off twice, right? Surely Friendo would suffer the same fate as many spooky sequels over the years.

<i>Wrong</i>.

Clown in a Cornfield 2 felt just like every good slasher film should: brutal, somewhat outrageous and oftentimes inappropriately fun. It was, at times, violent enough to make me cringe <spoiler> looking at you, Hunter's dad</spoiler> but the thrill kept me reading more. While I wasn't totally thrilled with the villain(s) this time around, it still felt like the right choice. If you're a fan of the Scream franchise and you really dug the newest addition I think you'll be happy with Clown in a Cornfield 2.

4.5 for the genre
This is a great addition to the slasher horror genre! I had a great time reading it! It had a good plot, and some chilling scenes! I hope there are more to come.

What's your favorite scary movie? 😱

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I'll start by saying, slashers are my all-time favorite movies. You literally cannot go wrong with them for me. So I knew I was going to like this before I even started.

Clown in a Cornfield 2 picks up a year after the massacre of Kettle Springs and the end of book 1. We follow our surviving characters as the past comes back to haunt them. Literally.

It would be good to get a refresher on book 1 before hopping into this sequel. Cesar spends virtually no time reflecting on the last book so I was a bit confused on who was who.

What this series does so well is capture the essence of a teen slasher. In that, it follows teens, teens are a part of its core audience, but it does not pander to a younger audience. Just like Friday the 13th or Scream, it's written with teens and adults in mind. So it does not read like a typical YA book.

Like your typical slasher, it's heavy on plot and light on character development. I enjoyed the new characters introduced, but it wasn't about the characters for me. It's gory and it's brutal. It played out like a movie in my mind and was a whole lot of fun!

Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives comes out August 23rd. Thank you to #netgalley for the ARC copy. #ClowninaCornfield2FrendoLives

I had such a good time reading this! I believe that one important thing when reading a slasher is to have a good time doing it and boy did I have fun! (Does that make me insane?) It was nice to see what everyone was up to and hoe they were dealing with the aftermath of the events of the first book. I really enjoyed how they trained to fight if they were attacked again. Now there was a plot point involving conspiracy people that wasn't to believable. Fortunately I'm reading this for entertainment not for facts.
This was a great sequel sequel is going right onto my To Buy list!

It’s been one year since the massacre. Quinn is back in Philadelphia at college, Russ and Cole are dating and still in Kettle Springs. Conspiracy theories abound and many people are saying that Quinn, Russ and Cole were responsible for the murders and it’s all a giant cover up.

While Russ and Cole are visiting Quinn at college, someone dressed as Frendo attacks a party they’re at. At the exact same time in Kettle Springs another person dressed as Frendo assaults Quinn’s dad. The clowns are back and they are legion!

I loved this! Familiar characters, new characters, gore, and thrills, with a couple of nice twists. It’s a great follow up to the first book and I’m praying for a third.

Quinn, our final girl from the first book, made it out of Kettle Springs. She went back to Philadelphia for college and thought the clown massacre from a year prior was behind her. A conspiracy theory, complete with documentaries and online forums, that spreads lies about how the clown massacre actually went down has made her and her fellow survivors the stuff of internet legend. A clown in a familiar mask returns … twice! One shows up at her dorm for a party in Philadelphia and another one attacks her father hundreds of miles away in Kettle Springs at the same time. Now, it’s up to Quinn to live long enough to set the record straight.

This book was a ton of fun. It felt like a perfect continuation of the first one, and it left me hungry for a third one. The YA feel lingers throughout the book, but it is full adult-level slasher fun.The conspiracy angle wasn’t as powerful as the themes in the first one, but the new dynamics carried the book through 416 fun-filled pages. There’s twists and turns aplenty that give this book an air of mystery - almost like Scream but not quite the same. I particularly love that Adam Cesare is a major horror buff (read: nerd) and packed in so many awesome horror tropes. Definitely recommend!

Frendo lives! What can I say about this sequel?
Well I guess I will start with how I re read the first book before getting to this one. And oh gosh. It flowed together so well. But this sequel took everything good from the first book and made it better. I loved the comparisons to the insurrection. As well as all the LGBTQ representation. This is my favorite read of the year so far. I can not recommend it enough. I am so grateful for the opportunity to read this ARC. Thank you Harper Collins Teens and Thank you Adam Cesare.

Oh my gosh, they made a Clown in a Cornfield 2?! YES. (slight spoiler at the end)

It’s time to go back to Kettle Springs; back to Rust, Cole and Quinn; back to killer clowns. Set one year after the Founder’s Day tragedy, the town is trying to rebuild and forget. Quinn is now in college, living life in Philadelphia, also trying to forget. But when online conspiracy theories boil over into real life, Kettle Springs unfortunately gets a part two.

I was expecting the beginning to jump out of the gates with the slasher trope like the first book so I personally found the first quarter to be a little slow (I’m impatient). I did enjoy the buildup of the conspiracy theories, the teens trying to push through their traumas, and getting to re-meet everyone again.

Once the clowns attack, the author spares no lives—like a true slasher, anyone can be next. The ending of this one solidified my enjoyment, who doesn’t love the ultimate final girl?

Thank you to the author and publisher for the eARC.

The first Clown in a Cornfield was one of my favorite surprises in recent memory. I'm a huge slasher fan, and in my opinion there are just not enough slasher novels, and there are certainly not enough slasher novels with gay characters at the forefront. The first Clown did more than enough to remedy that, and I loved it.

I loved Clown 2 (Electric Boogaloo) even more. If the first Clown book was Alien, then Clown 2 (2 Clown 2 Cornfield) is it's Aliens. It's smarter, sharper, and darker than the first. The Clowns themselves are more terrifying than the first book, only because I can actually see something like this happening. Hell, it almost DID happen on January 6th, 2021. In that way it's a bit harder to read if you're exhausted by the disgusting political atmosphere of America, but its worth it.

Clown 2 (...ok fine I'll stop) treats its main cast impeccably. They're hardened, battered but not broken, and I love each of them. Quinn stands up there with the best Final Girls of the genera, a delicate balance of Sidney Prescott from the Scream series and the battled hardened Laurie Strode from the recent Halloween reboot/sequels. Cole has evolved, using his high school persona as a shield and a weapon. But Rust stole the show for me. He was my favorite in the first book, and the loss of screen time for him in it hurt me, but Clown 2 more than makes up for it. Cole and Rust get a *huge* focus in this one, and it was exactly what I needed after the first book.

In fact that there are multiple points of view quite often, more so than the first book. In the first book it jumped to a different character for one quick scene or two, but in this one there are multiple characters who get multiple chapters from their point of view and it helps give more weight to the story. Everyone gets their own moment in the spotlight and the book is all the better for it.

The main set piece this time around is amazing. It's the same, but different in the most exciting way. The finale was an absolutely bonkers roller coaster ride, and easily topped the first book in my opinion. It's beyond satisfying.

I love where everyone stands at the end of the book, and I cannot wait for what I assume will be a third book.

Overall, Clown 2 is a thrill ride that I was insanely excited to read and it lived up to (and beyond) every expectation I had. The book starts out slower than the first, but it helped give weight to the current lives of the surviving protagonists from the first book, and once things started going down they didn't stop.

Pick this up when it comes out.

Seriously.

Thank you to Harper Teen and Adam Cesare for the chance to read this early!

I’ll be editing this with a full review after I’ve had time to make some notes and sit with the ending.

The short version: Clown in a Cornfield 2: Friendo Lives is an overwhelming success. The book does everything a good sequel should do and more! Friendo Lives is the Aliens to the originals Alien, more action, more clowns, more corn, more Friendo. I fell right back in love with our trio of heroes and couldn’t help but root for them at every bloody turn. Friendo Lives succeeds in being a smart political satire and commentary on the current state of our nations political climate and unrest, while also being an over the top slasher/action/horror book about fucking clowns.

Be looking for my longer review soon and then be ready to run to your local bookstore and pick up the book on August 23, 2022 (maybe even preorder it).

Lastly, thank you so much to Adam (man, what a great first name) Cesare for this unabashedly fun read. I hope one day we get Clown in a Cornfield X: Friendo In Space.

Not quite sure if this was necessary but like all sequels to horror flicks this was just okay.

“Clown in a Cornfield 2” reunites the Three, Cole, Rust and Quinn as they try to move past the massacre and tackle college life but when trumped up videos and fake news screamers on the internet try to make them look like the monsters they find themselves back in Kettle Springs for a night they won’t soon forget.

What I loved so much about the first book was how it took this real world like madness and amped it up to the point of a massacre showing how easy it is for that kind of psychotic behavior to be manipulated into murder and while this book didn’t quite hit that level of enjoyment it did follow that lead of social commentary. Tackling the misinformation trend we have been seeing in real life and how people can be whipped into a frenzy of their own delusion is again something we have watched happen and I wish we had a bit more on that here since it was only touched upon but it worked for what it was trying to accomplish.

I forgot how much I loved this trio even though they were very broken. Quinn and Rust with their focus on seeing everyone as a threat and Cole just wanting to forget made some of their scenes hard as they tried to reform their unit and I wasn’t thrilled with all of their coping mechanisms but it’s very real to trauma so I can’t knock it too hard. I wish we had more of them together since it felt like they were held in the background granting POV to lesser characters.

Not a bad sequel but in comparison to the first it’s very much a step down though I will say the ending had me fully excited to see what would happen if we made this a trilogy but we’ll have to wait and see.

**special thanks the publishers and netgalley for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review**

Adam Cesare did it again! He is one of my auto-buy authors. I am absolutely obsessed with his writing style and his books. The first book had me absolutely gripped from the get go. I will say, this one did start out little slower, but holy shit the pay off was worth it! The last half of the book is so incredibly fast paced and insane. All I could think about while reading was "Holy shit, QANON is in Kettle Springs!" Some of the characters in this book are bat shit crazy. I couldn't help but comparing the events of this book, to those of the 2021 White House attack. Not to get political, but it was definitely the vibe I got and that is what truly scared me about this book. I once saw someone describe the first book as "reading a fantastic b-movie" and I could not agree more! If this were a film, I just know this would be the PINNACLE of b-movies. No doubt. Overall this was such a fantastic read and I am so grateful for the opportunity to have been able to receive an ARC.

I'd like to give a huge thank you to NetGalley, HarperTeen, and the one & only Adam Cesare!

Overall Rating: 9/10

This was exactly what a sequel to a slasher should be.

We are thrown back into this story right around the anniversary of the massacre and our three survivors have moved on in the best ways they can. And just like a slasher sequel, Frendo is back and out for revenge. Across the county, people have decided the event was a hoax with an online community trying to disprove their accounts of what happened that night.

I was disturbed but how Cesare took events that have happened in the past couple of years and wove similar themes into his story. I've struggled with this in the past because reality seems to be more disturbing than fiction, but this was excellently done. There is still a lot of gore, similar to the first but it was awesome to see how our trio has learned and changed in the year since that fateful night.

We also get a few new characters that are well done and tied to the original story well (some of them might even live!). And a twist that I did not seem coming until the end of the book.

If there is a third book, I will 100% be excited and read it as soon as I can get my hands on it.

I really enjoyed the latest installment in the Clown in a Cornfield series, though it's impossible not to compare it to the first book (which I adored). Quinn Maybrook is back in Philly for college, and her Kettle Springs pals come to pay her a visit. The three survivors of the Kettle Springs Massacre are internet-famous, though a "the massacre was a hoax" discourse is unfortunately part of that. When Frendo reappears in both Kettle Springs and Philadelphia, Quinn and her pals know that something needs to be done- once and for all.

I enjoyed this slasher almost as much as the first one, though it was not as fast-paced as the first. That really worked in some moments, like when we are getting to know a new cast of characters. Jerri's character was one of my favorites, and I would love to see more of her in future books. I also thought that the general premise of the "fake news" folks was timely and very well done. Scenes changed very rapidly in this book, and I wish we could've spent more time focused on one location instead of jumping around so much. Overall, this book was fun and Clown in a Cornfield fans will be very very happy! Recommended to lovers of the Purge and the Scream franchise.

A solid, worthy sequel.

We're reunited with our survivor trio of teens--Quinn, Rust, and Cole--just a little after the year anniversary of the massacre. They're all adjusting to life as well as they can, but, of course, it ain't over. Frendo is back in a coordinated attack at Quinn's college and back in Kettle Springs all while dealing with the increase of those who believe the massacre was a hoax. There are entire online communities trying to disprove the trio's stories and claiming they were the murders and the sheriff was innocent.

This conspiracy aspect is the most interesting part of the book and is unfortunately applicable to the world today. I doubt it would work as well if it was written during any other time than post-Trump presidency and in the middle of the pandemic. All of that was written well and worked in the world. I really liked Jerri's character and how she tied into the original killings.

There is plenty of gore, though maybe a little less than the first one. I sort of hate to compare it to the first one because this a well done and thoughtful story all on it's own. But it's a slasher sequel. The comparison is inevitable. I did like the first one a little bit more--maybe because I had zero expectations--and the first one is a little more fast paced than this one. But I still really enjoyed the sequel and read it in a day, and I will be buying my own physical copy, along with a copy for my library.

I will also 100% read and love a third book in the series.