Something strange has arrived on Cape Cod, and it’s not just the UFOs.
Ken Wakeman, a skeptical UFOlogist who seeks the truth about paranormal phenomenon, struggles to discredit the myriad of crackpot theories out there. Melissa "Mel" Howard, a reporter for a small Cape Cod newspaper, copes with the seasonal tourist invasion and its accompanying anxieties. When the Cape becomes the national focus over a rash of UFO sights, they join forces to get to the bottom of it.
Despite denials from town officials and the military that UFOs have landed, mass hysteria overcomes the seaside community. In addition to the frantic humans, Astro (Ken’s Golden Retriever) has also been acting strangely.
Joining the invasion is Klick, the promiscuous leader of a spandex-clad UFO cult whose members want to “amalgamate” with the Fornacisians when their spaceship lands. Mel learns that when dealing with wing nuts, the truth isn’t necessarily “out there”. Tom Frasier, an infamous proponent of crashed saucers and frozen alien bodies, claims the local military base houses some intriguing secrets. After a visit from the FBI gives legitimacy to Tom’s story, Ken will ultimately decide how far he’s willing to go to witness humanity’s greatest close encounter.
Entertaining storyline that holds the reader's interest. The shifting first person narration was well done, except the chapters from alien perspective. I think the authors went a little too far to expect the reader to translate binary code to text. It can be done, I did it, but it is a cumbersome task to expect from the average reader.
The book had some editing issues with grammar, word usage and spelling errors. Not enough to make it unreadable, but does cause disruption in reading to those who value the English language.
This intriguing book is written with humor as UFO's strike Cape Cod and a group of people are in search of some answers. Close encounters take readers into a story that is intriguing and will also have the reader smiling at the antics along the way.
I had lots of fun with this book. I don’t really care if aliens exist or not but so many people take it seriously and get really upset with others who don’t share their views. I may be Guilty of the odd crop circle in my youth but I’m not really willing to admit anything yet. On the other hand… when the tv starts talking to me after a few drinks…..
Loved it-familiarity with the locale an added bonus - Quirky Shades of Vonnegut for genius and nostalgia-writing feels intimate and without pretention.
This is absolutely what I was looking for when I went hunting for UFO fiction. I was 100% done with reading novels about crashed UFOs being held captive by government agents and aliens with nefarious plans. I was looking for something quirky, and fun with a touch a realism.
High Strangeness follows several characters, including Ken's dog. That threw me when I first one of the dog's chapters so if an anthropomorphised dog isn't your thing you may want to skip this book. Although it does add an extra "something" to the story. The book is also highly localised to the Cape Cod area, an area that is gaining some traction as having weird things happen (See the Bridgewater Triangle). Fun reading and you can get through it in a couple of hours. Perfect if you're currently stuck in quarantine.
A self-published failure. It would have made a good short story, even a novelette, but there's not enough content to make it into the novel this is. A possible UFO siting on Martha's vineyard with some stereotyped people, a trivial dog personality, and chapters supposedly from the point of view of the alien that exist just to pad the length to a novel. Not good.
I really enjoyed this book. At times it got me properly laughing out loud, like . And it kept me guessing right to the end what was going on. I also found it refreshing that Ken . Most of the supporting characters jumped off the page.
Some minor criticisms: I thought the voice of Ken and Mel were too similar (slightly smartass, pop culture nerds) and the initial pov chapters from the dog were irritating, but I liked where they went with it.
I also thought it got a bit bogged down in the middle doing info dumps in the form of media briefings and Klick's lecture.
Usually, I know what the end will be, this book I did not.
Was it going to be hoax busting? Was it going to be the truth is out there? The dog was interesting and wacky The cult dude was pointless but in reality aren't cults pointless?
I was entertained. There are couple of unanswered questions....think alien and it's portable urination tree.
In the summah with all the cahs. Great characters. Best is the dog. No spoilers. Oh yeah, its a Bomarc missile which was ground to air interceptor. PAVE PAWS is technically an electronic fence. It knows when something goes through. that is correlated to what should be going through when. Its a missile warning sensor primarily. Run by and from NORAD. Fun stuff. Been there done that.
Not a bad story, but would it have killed anyone to give it a grammatical mechanics overhaul? So many weird little errors kept pulling me out of the story. The worst one was when the author wrote, "He looked like Colonial Kurtz from Apocalypse Now." Colonel isn't the most obvious word to spell, but come on! A quick search would have fixed this.
This book thinks it's being clever but it is plain ignorant. The author thinks Game of Thrones fans are tin foil hat UFO Alien freaks. Game of Thrones fans are not part of that crowd. The author works hard at mocking everything he thinks he knows about nerd culture. This book is mean spirited trash.
I literally could not put the book down. It was well written, funny, and refreshing. Bravo to the authors, I look forward to reading more books from them!