An excellent sequel to Savage Island. It was great to be back with familiar characters in a thrilling new setting. A great read at a spooky time of year!

Getting to this review took longer, as I didn't realise when I initially requested it that it was a sequel, and I do wonder if I would have enjoyed it more had I not read the first book which packed more of punch and had more of a fresh feel to it. I was expecting a wilder ride than the first (which felt very much like Saw or Hostel) but in written form, with survivors having to escape a psychopath, With the sequel, I expect a higher body count, more violence etc. and this book just didn't deliver in the way I expected. It was still a fun thriller/slasher and I would recommend it to people who enjoy Riley Sager and Grady Hendrix.

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Little Tiger Group in exchange for an honest review.

THIS IS A SEQUEL TO SAVAGE ISLAND. SPOILERS FOR SAVAGE ISLAND AHEAD.

I am a huge fan of Red Eye, a lesser known YA horror series following in the footsteps of Point Horror and other 90s teen horror but with a distinctly modern feel and a much creepier tone overall. Cruel Castle is the sequel to Savage Island, focusing on three surviving characters from the first book: Grady, Ben and Lizzie. After Grady killed Carmen at the end of the previous book, it turns out he faked the deaths of Ben and Lizzie and helped them go on the run. Grady works for Gold in a team of fellow psychopaths and the plot kicks off when he displeases Gold and they are all sent on a 'team bonding exercise' which might involve a few deadly escape rooms in a remote castle.

This was pretty much everything you could want from a sequel to Savage Island. It initially felt like a bit of a copout that Lizzie and Ben were still alive, but Pearce manages to make it work and create a plot which justifies it happening. The use of escape rooms to continue the theme of the previous book whilst also making it new was a genius move and those were definitely my favourite sections to read about. The rooms get pretty creative and offer a lot of fun (and genuinely intense) horror. The new characters were inventive and intriguing, and my only complaint is that some of them didn't stick around as long as I would have liked as I was enjoying learning about them.

Overall, Cruel Castle is a fantastic horror book for teens or adults alike. If you're a fan of the first one or even just a fan of the 'horrific games' subgenre, there's a lot to like here. I really hope a third one of these gets released as there is huge promise here, and I am always glad to see new Red Eye books released.

Overall Rating: 4/5 stars

The writing of this kept me hooked the entire way through and I just absolutely loved it. I love a good castle/island setting and this did that perfectly,

So, firstly, I didn't realise this was book two of an on going series. I felt at a disadvantage because I didn't know the back stories.

Now I love horror films but this book made me sleep with the night light on. I'm still in two minds whether I want to read the first one. Hey, and I'm an adult. This is definitely not for the younger teens.

There are lots of twists and turns and a lot of violence. I guess I would recommend this book but be prepared for lights on.

Enjoy!

I love a good YA horror. They have the right amount of scariness for me without making me have nightmares.

I loved the first book in this series and was so excited to see it had a sequel.

There was lots of good twists in this book that i didn't see coming. This book is action packed but you still got to know the characters which was great.

I would say you need to read the first book first but this iis a great follow on

Intense and deadly. Nail-biting and edge-of-the-seat thriller. Camera-like narrative, zooming in and out of the characters and setting left me breathless! Bryony mercilessly led me into her Cruel Castle but without making me feel anxious about not reading Savage Island.

Thank you Little Tiger and Net Galley for the e-ARC.

I was given an arc of Cruel Castle by Bryony Pearce and I could not put it down!

Rating - ⭐⭐⭐⭐/ 5

Synopsis -
Cruel Castle is the sequel to Savage Island where we follow Grady, after the events on the island, going to work for Gold, however he realises now what he's got himself in for and decides to plot his escape while on a "team building exercise" at a remote castle. Meeting him at the castle to help take Gold down are Ben and Lizzie, presumed dead and on the run. They all soon realise, however, that the only way to escape the castle and find freedom is to participate in a series of deadly challenges. Is history going to repeat itself?

My Thoughts -
I absolutely loved this book. I sped through it, not getting the chance to put it down because of all the crazy things going on. I loved seeing the characters from the first book again because it really gave me some sort of closure based on how the last book left off, however, it was also fun to see them in this whole new light. Often, characters go through things and then by the next book / movie / whatever, they are completely fine and get on with their new storyline so it was good, and refreshing, to see how much the island actually effected them all. It was especially interesting to see Ben's character development and how he is coping with his memories from the island, yes it does just play into the stigma around certain mental heath conditions (including the one that Ben seems to have) but it was still a good read nonetheless.
One thing I thought about this book was how clever it is. not only are there so many plot twists as well as general troubles that the characters have to struggle through which, you have to admire how much effort the author put in to make it all work cohesively, but it is also great because of the perspectives. Sure, it starts with none of the characters really knowing what is going on but soon things, and people, start to fall into place which gives us these first person perspectives of two people who both think that they are in control but, in their own different ways, they are both completely wrong.
I loved the plot of all of the escape rooms in this book. It was interesting to see what the author would come up with next in the next room; they were all so creative and written so well I could see them and was trying to figure it out with them (I got most of the answers wrong though so thank god I wasn't actually there or I would have died in the first room!). It is a bit dramatized, like even though it is a contemporary setting and there aren't any supernatural elements, this isn't a thing that would happen in real life, no matter how crazy the billionaires get, but it doesn't matter much because it is very entertaining and that doesn't have to be realistic.

Cruel Castle will be released on the 5th of August 2021

This is a great book, I finished it in less then a day and I was really impressed. I loved the first book so I was intreged to see if this would stand up to the first and it really does. It’s very gory in some places, it’s not as thought provoking as the first but the twists are amazing and some I really didn’t see coming.
Great book and will definitely read more from this author!

It’s been six months since the Iron Teen Tragedy, something that readers of Savage Island will immediately recognise as PR spin. Only Grady, Ben and Lizzie know the truth about what really happened on Aikenhead, Marcus Gold’s private island.

While Ben and Lizzie have been in hiding from Gold, Grady has been working for him. For the past four months he’s been one of the participants in Gold’s graduate programme in London. When he learns he’s being sent on a team building weekend at Stowerling Keep, Gold’s castle in Scotland, Grady knows this won’t be any ordinary team building exercise. He is certain it’s going to be Aikenhead 2.0.

“Stowerling Keep. It’s going to make Aikenhead look like Disneyland.”

Accompanying conspiracy theorist Grady on this potential bloodbath are several of his fellow graduates:
* Aanay, who seems too nice to have made it into Gold’s graduate programme
* Bella, a girl who uses her looks to manipulate others into doing her bidding
* Dawson, one of the “clones”, who won’t let anyone see what he’s written in the notebook he carries in his trouser pocket
* Iris, who doesn’t talk to anyone.

Of course, Ben and Lizzie aren’t going to let an opportunity to expose Gold’s nefarious deeds to the world go to waste. They may not have received a personal invitation from Gold to come to Stowerling Keep but that’s why infiltration was invented.

Savage Island was one of my favourite reads of 2018 and while many books I’ve read since then are now pretty fuzzy in my mind, my memory of it remains sharp. If I had to describe it in three words, it would be Survivor: Psychopath Edition. It felt fresh. It surprised me. I didn’t know where it was going. I’m all for gore in my horror and it gave me some “ew!” moments. I absolutely adored it!

Naturally, I was all in when I learned there was a sequel. I enjoyed it but it didn’t pack the punch of the original for me. In horror sequels I expect the body count to be higher, the deaths to be more gruesome and the twists to just keep on coming.

This sequel plays out in a series of escape rooms, which I’ve seen done so many times now, and for it to have given me the wow factor of the first book it would have needed to up the ante in a massive way. There is plenty of blood to paint the walls with, there’s bone crunching and some insides that are now your outsides action to look forward to but it felt somewhat tame to me when I compared it with Savage Island.

Told in four voices, Ben, Lizzie, Grady and another whose name I won’t mention because spoilers, I got a sense of what everyone’s state of mind was as we progressed through the ‘team building’. Switching up the perspectives also helped to propel the story along and provided opportunities for flashbacks to help explain the relevant backstories.

While I liked being able to get inside Grady’s head, I never really bought what was going on with Ben. If I hadn’t already encountered that explanation multiple times before, in books and movies, then it might have made sense to me but I’ve seen it done too many times (and usually not well) so I wasn’t as receptive to it here. This probably won’t be a problem for younger readers, who won’t have come across this or escape rooms as many times as I have.

It probably sounds like I didn’t have fun reading this book. I did, though, and I’m really looking forward to reading more books by this author. If anything, because I loved Savage Island so much, my expectations for this book may have been unreasonably high.

If a third book in the series is ever written, I’ll be there at the front of the queue to read it. I’d just hoped this book would be completely over the top (in a good way) like the first book was.

I would still recommend it to anyone who enjoys YA horror. For context, though, and to understand what the three main characters have already survived, you’ll want to read Savage Island first.

Content warnings include mention of death by suicide and mental health.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Stripes Publishing, an imprint of Little Tiger Group, for the opportunity to read this book.

Savage Island messed me up pretty badly when I read it. This one isn't quite so bad; most of the characters are already psychopaths, so I don't have to worry about whether I'd do what they did in those circumstances.

The ending of Savage has been retconned slightly to allow for a new story, and from the ending of this one I'm guessing there'll be at least one more in the series. Bryony managed to raise the stakes very convincingly (I'm guessing she's visited a lot of escape rooms in her time.) I can't wait to see what's going to happen in the next one.

There's a few good twists I didn't see coming and some nice character moments. For a book with so much action, there are plenty of moments where people are talking and sharing parts of themselves.

I wouldn't read this without having read Savage first, but it's a fantastic follow up and I'm very excited for the next one.

Bryony Pearce’s Cruel Castle heralds the exciting and long overdue return of the YA horror franchise Red Eye. Having not published a book since Gabriel Dylan’s excellent Whiteout back in 2018 it was looking like the series was well and truly washed up and so book eleven was a very welcome return. I have a feeling the publisher underestimated how popular this series was in school libraries and I was often asked “If I had any new Red Eye books” by desperate kids. However, considering this is the first boo in three years I way very surprised the publisher decided to release a sequel for its comeback? Cruel Castle follows the events in book nine Savage Island (2018) also by Bryony Pearce and the stories are very closely connected and reading this without having the predecessor might be rather confusing. Sadly, Red Eye do not return with a bang and Cruel Castle is easily one of the weakest in the series, with the whole novel build around a rather old hat escape room format, which lacks the freshness and cruelty of its predecessor Savage Island, which was set on a remote northern Scottish island. It is also worth pointing out that in June of this year Pearce published another YA horror novel called Raising Hell which was significantly better than this and would also have been a good fit for Red Eye rather than this rather tired, bland and undemanding sequel.

The story takes place some months after the events of Savage Island where a group of teens are duped into thinking they will be participating in adventure style challenges, for a huge cash prize, only to find out it is a huge setup and if they are to survive have to kill each other off. It’s not quite Battle Royale, but there are some nasty challenges lying ahead and the book was grisly fun. I am not going to say which characters are in Cruel Castle as it would provide spoilers as to who survives in Savage Island, but there is a lot of conspiracy, revenge is on the table, aimed at the billionaire psychopath who set it all up. However, the billionaire has his own ideas and the “team-building exercise” in a Scottish castle is much more than it seems, but ultimately a less fun version of what went down on the island. There were some solid twists and turns, with the plot more thriller than horror which might attract younger readers, but overall, I felt an overwhelming sense of disappointment as this was a brilliant opportunity for Red Eye to announce its triumphant return to YA horror, instead this was rather underwhelming. AGE RAGE 12+

Ben & Lizzie survived Savage Island but they are having to hide from their families just to keep the Machiavellian psychopath, Gold, ignorant of their whereabouts. Grady is working for Gold & secretly helping his former friends but when he is suddenly sent on a team-building exercise to a remote castle. Grady is suspicious of Gold's motives & he reaches out to Ben & Lizzie for help. Soon they are locked inside the castle with three other employees of Gold, & they have to navigate a series of lethal escape rooms to survive.

The follow-up to Savage Island is even better than the first book in my opinion as the plot & pace are tighter & keep the reader's interest fully engaged . I loved the deadly escape rooms theme & it was nice to catch up with some of the characters from the original. There are plenty of twists & turns as well as well as cut-throat betrayal , & as the violence quota is again quite high, I would definitely recommend both books for older teens. This is another thrilling read from the author.

Thanks to NetGalley & publishers, White Tiger Group/Stripes Publishing, for the opportunity to read an ARC.