This is the long awaited treat-quel to the series full of utter clown carnage. I was beyond excited to pick up this book and see what kind of gruesome gore Christopher Robertson dreamed up this time.

The first half of the book wasn't hitting the same way the first two had, but by the end, I felt the familiar comfort of... violent discomfort and really liked how the story panned out. As in the first two, we are getting the return of the wereclowns, the culprit this time: tainted candy corn. Oh, and because it deserves a special shoutout: Twizzler, the furry fiend who stole everyone's hearts (and quite a few lives).

In true nature, this book is also formatted as if you were watching a slasher film, with "cut to" descriptions and visual descriptors to aid in the overall vision.
- I feel like a lot of the first half of this book felt disjointed and didn't flow as well as I was hoping. Some of the scenes felt like they were just thrown in for extra violence without really flowing from one to the next. This made it hard to follow, especially when there were a LOT of characters introduced throughout.
- We follow a main group of teens, as in the previous books as well. And the story does return to them mostly. But some additional scenes focusing on other random people in town made it a little hard to tell what was important and what was just to show the reign of carnage. This is no different from book one, but somehow it felt less cohesive in this one.

The plot is described as being focused on a heavy metal festival, but it actually is a carnival + festival + the literal entire town. So the stakes are much higher and the chaos is much more widespread.
- The music festival element was VERY fun. The guitar battle? Iconic. I wish more had happened at/with the stage location because it feels like a lot of the action was unrelated to the music portion.
- The carnival scenes felt repetitive of book one. A lot of the rides and booth kills felt familiar. Yes, they were different, but I kind of wish that it was not a carnival/fair setting again.

Hannah is back from book two and she plays a VERY important role in this one, which I liked, but also... didn't?
- This is potentially spoilery, so I'll hide it.

Hannah's role in creating this new wave of clowns was exciting and I was very excited to see WHY it was happening. But her reason for recreating the chaos made little sense to me. It felt way too extreme and 100% did not feel like something a teenager would be doing.

The blood and guts were spilled and it was a beautifully violent story, as expected. As always, so many creative ways to die. For lovers of splatterpunk and all things bloody, this will give you everything you want. I found a new gag reflex so that's cool.

The ENDING? Dang. I am very intrigued and impatiently waiting for the final installment to see what kind of absolutely unhinged story can come next.

Thank you to the author for the free e-ARC. My review is completely my own, completely voluntary, and always completely honest.