My Two Cents: SLASHTAG by Jon Cohn

They should make a movie out of Slashtag by Jon Cohn. Seriously, instead of rehashing yet another installment in the tired Scream franchise, or unnecessarily remaking yet another Stephen King story that already had a perfectly good film adaptation (looking at you, Mike Flanagan's version of The Mist), Hollywood could be mining the imaginative and definitely screen-worthy trove that is Cohn's Slashtag. It's a fun, fast-paced mix of Ready or Not meets House on Haunted Hill meets Cabin in the Woods, and from the first page, it is a hard book to put down.

In Slashtag, reticent social media user Tawny Howlett is living a lie. To her millions of followers, her life is perfect, filled with Lululemon activewear, alkaline water, organic produce, and hot yoga workouts. When the cameras are off, however, and her carefully applied makeup and contouring removed, she reveals hidden scars of both the physical and psychological variety, constant reminders of a childhood trauma for which she feels responsible, and that left her younger sister, April, wheelchair-bound and in need of dialysis.

When one of the products Tawny is paid to endorse turns out to be contaminated, resulting in widespread food poisoning, Tawny is left in a precarious position. Reliant on her social media presence, she is suddenly cast as a villain in the eyes of those who once adored her. Ridiculed and scorned, she's nicknamed "Tawny Toilet" and it appears both her carefully laid facade as well as her influencer empire are doomed to crumble. When she's offered the chance to redeem herself, as well as possibly get April a desperately needed kidney transplant, by participating in a live game/reality show called "Slashtag," she has little choice but to accept.

Tawny is whisked off to Dire, California, a ghost town in the middle of the desert, and the stately Propitius Hotel. Built by sadistic madman Arthur Wilson, the Propitius's labyrinthian halls were designed with death in mind, as a century earlier, Wilson used a network of secret passages and hidden rooms to abduct, experiment on, and ultimately murder countless victims. (I suspect the Propitius Hotel is loosely based on the infamous "Murder Castle" in 1890s Chicago, and Arthur Wilson modeled after that real-life horror story's protagonist, H.H. Holmes.)

The goal of the show "Slashtag" is simple: solve a series of puzzles scattered throughout the Propitius and win prizes. Tawny finds herself in the company of other celebrities in this quest, including D-wreck, an influencer who is supposedly her "boyfriend," if only for marketing purposes; Britt, a social media darling and America's reality-TV sweetheart; Constanza, a mask-wearing celebrity chef whose real identity is unknown; Kiki, a popular cosplayer; Landon, an actor best known for portraying Arthur Wilson in a movie version of the murders within the Propitius; and Shawn, a former NFL player mired in minor controversy. In fact, as it turns out, all of the contestants in "Slashtag" are in conundrums similar to Tawny's. They're all competing in the hopes of redemption, each haunted by ghosts of his or her own past.

Those ghosts turn out to be of the literal not just figurative variety. By the time Tawny and her new friends/rivals figure that out, however, it's too late. "Slashtag" is far more than just a game -- and the stakes are brutal.

In stories like this, the set-up at the beginning, while necessary, can often be drudgery to get through. This isn't the case with Slashtag, as from the moments of their introductions, we get a sense for each of these diverse and colorful castmates, and like Tawny, find ourselves picking sides, choosing who will be friend or foe, from the onset. There's plenty of deception among the show's participants and a healthy dose of mystery as the group tries to unravel the strange and gruesome history of the Propitius Hotel. There's also some pretty inventive gore, as well, especially in a scene in which Landon, the actor, finds himself face to face with Wilson, the role that distinguished his career.

Cohn steadily ups the ante with every page, raising the stakes for his characters, ratcheting up the danger, and eroding away at each's carefully crafted social media personas to get to the real, flawed individuals beneath. In a cast as large as Slashtag's, that's quite an accomplishment. In the hands of a less capable author, many if not all the characters could have very easily fallen into stereotyped tropes. Cohn manages to impart moments of humanity into even the most deplorable or manipulative of the castmates, and while you may not like all of them by the end of the book, you've still felt empathy for them in their individual plights. Some have even surprised you enough to leave you rooting for them.

The concepts in Slashtag aren't new, but Cohn makes them uniquely his own with a likeable cast, some well-placed and truly gruesome moments, plenty of fast-paced action, and above all, a "final girl" who breaks the "final girl" mold in all the best ways. His writing is superb, his pacing spot-on, and Hollywood should be paying closer attention, because this story's made to be enjoyed on the big screen.

Slashtag is available here.