This review first appeared in Booklist on November 5, 2025.
Brie Turner just wants to start over: new school, new friends, new priorities—a new identity. Anything to leave behind the humiliating incident involving her family that made her switch schools in the first place. So when she helps Emily—queen bee of the Ems, the most popular group of girls in school—win a field day race and gets invited to her birthday party at Wildwoods, the town’s storied amusement park, Brie hopes she’s finally found the fresh start she’s been longing for. Except the Ems play mean, and when a game of Truth or Dare goes awry, Brie ends up trapped in the park’s abandoned section, accidentally awakening a long-buried menace that quickly turns her social gamble into a full-on fight for survival. Dawson deftly blends roller-coaster thrills, scary-movie tension, and middle-school drama in this sharp, fast-paced story about friendship, family, and finding out what you’re really made of when the true monsters show up. A perfect ride for fans of other spooky, suspenseful theme-park thrills, like Kiersten White’s Wretched Waterpark (2022) and K. R. Alexander’s Escape (2022).
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