As I was browsing “horror books” on Amazon, one of the first results was Clown in a Cornfield. Little did I know that in a few months, this young adult novel would be brought to the silver screen as yet another clown-based slasher flick… but this review is for the book, so let’s stick to that.
*Warning, spoilers below!*
I had only read a few Amazon reviews and mostly they were good. Not knowing exactly what I was about to get myself into, I started reading. Clown in a Cornfield centers around highschooler Quinn Maybrook as her recently-widowed father takes her from her cushy big city life in Philly to Kettle Springs, Missouri. Reading characters’ thoughts on the town was crazy for me because — recently moving a small town in Missouri from a bigger city in Virginia, a difference of almost 200,000 people — I could relate to every word on those pages. Fellow highschooler Rust describes having a movie theater and a diner, and the closest mall being miles and miles away; a small town, Kettle Springs is far from its glory days when the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory (with mascot “Frendo the Clown” plastered everywhere) was up and running. It’s funny when a place is described exactly how it really is… Anyway, adults do Boomer things and the Gen Zs cause a ruckus. After a Founder’s Day prank gone wrong, Frendo becomes the face of death, killing kids left and right.
When I bought Clown in a Cornfield, I had forgotten, or better yet didn’t realize, that this was a young adult (YA) novel. This posed a small issue, because I usually am not interested in those stories. But being easy to read and even easier to keep reading (a page-turner, this is), I kept going. If you aren’t an avid YA connoisseur, the use of certain phrases (and one particular instance of AAVE — which is a whole other subject) and actions done by the characters might feel a little too stereotypical and one-dimensional. Clown in a Cornfield unfortunately is that. But alas, I remembered that this book was not necessarily made for me in mind, so I won’t hold it against Cesare.
Even the big secret behind our killer clown is on-the-nose. With the conservative-leaning adults finally being done with the vlogging, drinking kids, they hatch a plan to kill them all in an effort to rid the town of the blight and making Kettle Springs “great again.” Main character Cole notes that the adults have failed to realize how much has changed since Baypen’s heyday and how the world as a whole is both geared toward the youth as well as against them, noting climate change denial, gun violence, and hateful gender politics as ways the adults were the actual root problem. With a plan masterminded by Sherriff Dunne, citizens — all dressed as Frendo — would use any means necessary to kill the kids and frame Cole and his crew as the perpetrators. About a third of the way through the book, you pretty much get how the rest of the story will go.
I cannot stress enough that you need to be used to and in the mood for reading YA fiction before stepping into Clown in a Cornfield. In no way was this a bad book. It was entertaining. The kills were fun. I grew to love some characters and was genuinely upset when they were murdered. I think that for me, I’m just tired. It’s like the Purge movies or American Horror Story; I can love a story but at some point it gets preachy. I am totally on the kids’ side with this; in my short time in a small town in Missouri, I can see how not providing people with basic “nice-essities” that are clearly available (just held back by older people who fear change) can make them angry and act out. But something about this being a reflection of real life is just not my cup of tea. I get enough of it in the news and unwillingly on my social media feed. Perhaps I’m just tired, exhausted with our current affairs. If Clown in a Cornfield was just a silly book about a random clown come to life by the ghost of someone who died in the Baypen fire, I doubt I’d feel this way.
Clown in a Cornfield definitely has the spark of something great; it’s obvious because they’ve made a whole movie about it! Personally, I prefer something a tiny bit smarter and a little less surface-level. What I can say Cesare did well was create a monster that varies from the other killer clowns we currently have. He has differentiated Frendo enough to warrant the marketing and praise it’s already getting. From the few snippets of trailer I’ve seen, the movie does look different enough from the book. So while I’ll skip opening weekend, perhaps I’ll get over the eye-rolling morality that is the Clown in a Cornfield novel in time to rent it on VOD.
Clown in a Cornfield is available on Amazon. Check out Adam Cesare and his other works on his website. Leave a comment and let me know how the movie went!
