Blood Cruise – Mats Strandberg
On the Baltic Sea, no one can hear you scream.
Tonight, twelve hundred expectant passengers have joined the booze-cruise between Sweden and Finland. The creaking old ship travels this same route, back and forth, every day of the year.
But this trip is going to be different.
In the middle of the night the ferry is suddenly cut off from the outside world. There is nowhere to escape. There is no way to contact the mainland. And no one knows who they can trust.
Welcome aboard the Baltic Charisma.
My thanks to the publishers for my review copy which I received through Netgalley.
The Baltic Charisma has been cruising the Scandinavian coastline for many a year. The crew work long hours and have a strong team spirit (evidenced by the return of a former colleague who has brought his boyfriend onboard to propose).
Also on board are party goers who plan to hit the bar (hard). A former Eurovision contestant who now finds himself hosting the onboard karaoke nights. A single woman trying to treat herself to a new adventure. A party-going couple of ladies who will drink and hope to hook a night of fun with a stranger…and on it goes. The variety of passengers is endless but special note should be taken of the woman traveling with a young boy. She is hiding her face and nobody seems to want to look at her twice…she will change the course of many lives – forever.
As the ship leaves shore all the crew and passengers become cutoff from the safety of the outside world. Their journey will be unforgettable as onboard is an evil, generations old and used to hiding from the public eye. But things are about to change for this evil entity is hungry and has decided that the days of hiding are over.
In the claustrophobic confines of a cruise ship a battle is about to rage and it gets mighty bloody.
I do love a horror tale and Blood Cruise ticked all the horror boxes. Evil power, lots of blood and murder, resilient spirited heroes try to thwart/evade/hide from the big bad and not everyone will survive. It was nicely done on the whole and I enjoyed following some the characters who (from a crowed passenger manifest) get the chance to have their stories told.
Definitely a read I would only recommend for horror fans. I did feel I was losing track of some of the characters in the middle of the book, some characters that I had thought to be dead popped up unexpectedly still very much alive. I got the name mixed up more than once so had to backtrack to work out exactly who I was reading about. This is more of a reflection on my ability to keep track of characters than the author’s storytelling but it did slow me down a bit.
If nasty, bloody fun is what you crave in a book then Blood Cruise is one for you. The strongest characters, who are given most time to shine, do just that and there are some powerful and emotive scenes as the crew and passengers face the prospect of an unpleasant death.
If the ship should get to shore can the evil be contained?
Blood Cruise is published by Jo Fletcher books and is available in digital and paperback format. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Cruise-thrilling-chiller-Stephen-ebook/dp/B0746M2TBG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532723156&sr=8-1&keywords=Mats+Strandberg