Savages – Greg F. Gifune // Book REVIEW

I am always on the the search for new horror authors, so I joined the Gore and More Goodreads book club. This book was their pick for the month of February, so I picked it up! Did I like it? Let’s find out!

It began as a vacation to the Cook Islands. But when seven friends are lost in the South Pacific after their boat goes down in a storm, they must survive at sea for several days in a small raft. Blown miles off course from their original position, and deep into open waters, they eventually encounter a small uncharted island.

Grateful to be alive, they begin their quest for survival, hopeful they’ll be rescued sooner than later. But the island is not the paradise it appears to be. Instead, it is a place of horror, death, torture and evil, of terrible secrets thought long buried and forgotten.

And they are not alone.

Something guards those horrible secrets, something evil and relentlessly violent, an ancient horror born of rage and vengeance, a blood-crazed predator that lives to kill and will stop at nothing to protect the island from those intruding upon its dark legacy.

The savage is loose, and there is no escape.

SAVAGES, the new novel from Greg F. Gifune

• The cover is AMAZING don’t you think? I read this on my e-reader, but I definitely need to buy a physical copy soon.
• The characters in this book were SO realistic, but still helped the plot move along. In my experience, it is really one or the other, but Gifune wrote each character with a specific set of skills that made it so that everyone was helpful, but none of them were super human or more helpful than the next. This is with the exception of one character, who was substantially weaker than the rest, but even this moved the story along seamlessly.
• The story was different from any other horror novel I have ever read. It incorporated history into the main plot and I thought it made things even scarier. Of course, I don’t read much historical fiction, in general, so I don’t actually know how unique this book is, in terms of other historical fiction horror, but it was unique to me.
• The thing that stood out to me most was the writing. Everything written was intentional. I mentioned the writing of the characters earlier, but even the terrible things that happened to the characters moved the story along, or kept the readers in the dark.
• The setting was intense. I’ve never been a huge fan of “Castaway” type stories, but this really kept me on edge. I can’t effectively explain what was different about this one, than some others, without spoiling.
• This really reminded me on Lord of the Flies, with adults, in a good way. Like the plot wasn’t necessarily similar, but the way that the characters slowly became mad just reminded me of the way the children in LoF became animalistic once on their own.
• The villain was terrifying! I don’t want to give too much away, but he gives me the creeps.

•  There were a couple characters that I found really annoying, especially this airhead millenial girl, who was a great deal younger than the rest. I know that the character was actually written to be annoying, but I just thought she was a little over the top (not that I don’t know people like her, though).

• I have nothing bad to say about this one!