Island Of The Dolls by Jeremy Bates

THE CREEPIEST ISLAND ON EARTH

Deep within an ancient Aztec canal system on the outskirts of Mexico City lies Isla de las Munecas...a reportedly haunted island infested with thousands of decrepit dolls.

While there to film a television documentary, several friends discover a brutal murder. Soon fear and paranoia turn them against one another - even as the unknown killer stalks them throughout the longest night of their lives. @goodreads 

MY REVIEW:

4 STARS 

I remember watching Josh Gates and his crew on Destination Truth go out to the island and it was freaky! At night, yeah. Some other groups when out there but Josh =)



I'm going to add part of the author's note so you can get a little bit of history but you can google and find the main web page for the island. You can find videos and pictures and just creepiness.

A two-hour canal ride from Mexico City lies Isla de las Munecas, or Island of the Dolls. It is best-known chinampa, or floating garden, in Xochimilco. It belonged to a man named Julian Santana Barrera, a native of the La Asuncion neighborhood. Santana Barrera was a loner, who was rarely seen in most of Xochimilco. According to the legend, Barrera discovered a little girl drowned in mysterious circumstances in the canals. He also found a doll floating nearby and, assuming it belonged to the deceased girl, hung it from a tree as a sign of respect. After this, he began hearing whispers, footsteps, and anguished wails in the darkness even though his hut-hidden deep inside the woods of Xochimilco-was miles away from civilization. Drive by fear, he spent the next fifty years hanging more and more dolls, some missing body parts, all over the island in an attempt to appease what he believed to be the drowned girl's spirit.

After Barrera's death in 2001-his body reportedly found in the exact spot where he found the girl's body fifty years before-the area became a popular tourist attraction where visitors bring more dolls.

Here is Barrera ↓



There is more to this but you can read it in the book or google it.

The author wrote a pretty good book about this island and I loved the different take he took on the legend. Zipping the lip on that one, no spoilers!

A bunch of (mostly idiots) go to the island to help one of their friends do a documentary. All of the involved in one way or another listed below, mostly =)

1. Pepper
2. Pita
3. Jesus
4. Elizaveta
5. Jack
6. Nitro
7. Maria
8. Lucinda
9. Rosa
10. Miguel

Some of these people are complete idiots that needed to be smacked upside the head. But I digress!



Jack used to be a Nascar driver until he had some medical issues. His girl friend is Pita and she's an idiot. Pita's brother is Jesus (not the real one of course) and he's a real jerk. Elizaveta is from Russia and I loved her and she's also Jesus' girlfriend. Nitro is just some jerk that was invited along. Pepper is the one doing the documentary. Miguel and Lucinda are just in a place they shouldn't have been. Rosa is a little girl that ended up in the middle of things. I loved her.

My favorites were Jack (even though he was stupid at times), Elizaveta, Rosa and Pepper.

So these morons are wandering around the island doing some video and pictures of the dolls. Some are drinking and every time you turn around, Jack and Nitro are picking fights and acting stupid. Jesus is making wise cracks and it's just ignorant. How about some more creepy dolls?



They find some old huts on the island but when Jack was off on his own he found a good sized hut with two bedrooms and he found little Rosa hidden underneath one of the beds. Like that wasn't creepy. Oh and all of the huts were filled with creepy dolls too!

They also find a dead body on the island and another one on the brink of death but since the weather turned bad, the boat guy said he wouldn't come back for them until the next day. I would have said oh hell no, lets go. I'm not staying here!



Then people start to get picked off and they get into fights and almost kill each other AND THEN, there is a knock at the door. For real! Can't even tell you about that because it goes off into freaking cray land then, but I figured it was coming.

Oh and I forgot to say that the book is told in the present and back in the 1950's when Maria was a little girl. You know, the little girl that was found dead. I wanted to kill some people in this book reading about her life. I know this is the author's fiction but I know things like this have happened in real life, don't get me started. This poor girl was labeled a moron at her school because they have some kind of a scale they rate the kids with <--really. She wasn't a moron she just had some mental issues and some medical issues, OMG people. The school told her parents that she should go into a special school because there is no hope for her. So her parents put her in some school where the nuns and priest were bad people, reminded me of the Native American schools and those evil bas... you know what, let's move on!

They did horrific things to Maria in that school until she escaped. Now I'm not going to tell you what all happened to her or what happened to her afterward. Read the book!

As to what happened with the nuts on the island and all of the cray going on, well you have to read that for yourself.


GOODREADS REVIEW:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1522564707