Review: Tales from the Gas Station: Volume Three by Jack Townsend

Title: Tales from the Gas Station: Volume Three

Series: Tales from the Gas Station #3

Previous books in this series: Tales from the Gas Station: Volume One | Tales from the Gas Station: Volume Two

Author: Jack Townsend

Genre: Adult, horror comedy

Publication date: April 2020

Published by: Jack Townsend

Source: Purchased ebook & audibook

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Synopsis: An army of monsters walks among us, hidden in plain sight. They’re fast. They’re strong. They’re unrelenting. And they only want one thing: the sh*tty gas station at the edge of town.

Coming as a surprise to absolutely no one, Jack—night-shift clerk and local crazy person—has found himself neck-deep in the middle of yet another world-ending terror. And this time around, nobody can be trusted. Not that tough-as-nails cop who probably knows a lot more than she’s letting on. Not the adorkable new employee who might be something far less innocent than she appears. Not even Jack’s best friend/emotional support human, whose mysterious past seems to have finally caught up with him.

In this latest installment of the Gas Station saga, Jack’s world will change forever. Questions will be answered, and answers will be questioned. Friends become enemies. Strangers become enemies. Frenemies become enemies. (You know what? Jack is going to have a lot of new enemies.)

Prepare yourself. Things are about to get weird.

My rating: ★★★★★

I love this series, and the beginning of this volume in particular was absolutely amazing! It starts off like a cliché horror movie, except in this case it’s in the POV of a side character... but OUR main character of the book, Jack. It was hilarious!

“You guys know you’re in the middle of a bad story, don’t you?”
“Whoa, dude,” said Liam. “Are you being, like, meta right now?”

But our self-aware Jack was done with their dumb bullshit pretty early on...

“STOP DOING EXPOSITION!” I shouted.

🤣 I loved this entire scene! This series is just fantastic! But I’ll tell you one thing: This book is no good to read out in public 😬 All I want to do is laugh out loud, so it was hard to read this and not burst out laughing. I adore the dark humor in this!

I wanted to scream at him “How is your head twisted all the way around like that!?” But I didn’t want to be rude in case it was some kind of medical condition, so I acted like it wasn’t the freakiest thing I’d seen all day.

Oh Jack, you’re so considerate 😂 I love Jack! He’s pretty chill when it comes to weird things... unless it’s a person whose head is twisted all the way around... Hey, a guy needs to have his limits, okay? Lol. But for being in danger so much—what with all the weirdness that goes on in the gas station—he does a pretty good job at staying alive. And that’s saying something because Jack is no fighter. In the last book, he literally threw a gun at a guy instead of using it the proper way... and then it took him a while to realize what he had done wrong 😂 He’s dumb sometimes, but he’s great!

Well that can’t be good. Did I turn into a vampire without noticing?

No, I decided. I can’t be a vampire. There must be something wrong with the mirror!

Oh, but he’s got NOTHING on Jerry! I adore Jerry, but OMG, how has he gotten this far in life being the airhead he is?? 😂

“Jerry!” I called.
He looked back at me and responded, “Don’t worry, bro. I’m just gonna go investigate that mysterious noise coming from behind the strange curtain in the back of this dark tent next to the horror house where we found the dead body. I’ll be right back.”

So because Jerry is my favorite character in this series, you can imagine how upset I was when he freaking DIED! 😭

I was a mess. Spencer, the guy that’s been trying to kill Jack throughout this entire series, then went on and sent Jack Jerry’s severed head! 😩 Oh, but that’s not the end of Jerry. Nope! His severed head then TALKED to Jack! 😳 Which, I mean, it’s not the weirdest thing that’s happened in this series 😂 But long story short, Jerry was NEVER dead—I don’t know whose freaking head that was, btw—Jerry was alive this whole time! He was in hiding! He had faked his death because there were some people after him! So all this stuff with the talking head was Jack, I don’t know, having a mental break? It was so incredibly sad!

Jack thought he had what's called Fatal Familial Insomnia, which basically means he doesn’t sleep... at all. There’s no cure and the poor guy was going to end up dead sooner rather than later because of this. Side effects include things like hallucinations, sooo you can see where I’m going with this. I knew Jack was not well, but holy crap! This was insane! And so sad! I was not expecting this book to get as emotional as it did.

Oh, and I mentioned that Jack THOUGHT he had FFI, so let me elaborate on that: It turns out that maybe he didn't have it?

You do sleep. If I had to guess, you probably sleep more often than an average person, but your sleep is extremely shallow, and often intertwined with hyper-realistic dreams and sleepwalking so convincing that those around you would have no reason to believe you’re not awake. It’s a very specific form of trauma-induced parasomnia.

This was insane! This whole time we thought Jack’s days were numbered because of FFI, but turns out that he has another thing altogether?? JFC 😳 I don’t even know what to think. After everything that happened, I don’t know what to believe anymore.

Anyway, let’s get to more characters. Lol. Another character I love is Rosa! She also works at the gas station and she is just really sweet and thoughtful! In this book, Rosa seems to have a thing for Jack, and Jack was being SO dense about it. Lol. And while that was hilarious, I didn’t really ship them. I’m more on the Amelia/Jack ship. Just saying 😏

I’m not gonna lie, the ending of this book was confusing AF! So many revelations were thrown at us that I didn’t even have time to process one thing before another revelation was dropped in our lap. It was crazy! This whole book was a crazy rollercoaster of a ride! And the only reason I’m not even mad at being confused at the end is because Jack was, too. Lol.

And not for the first time that week, or day, or hour, or even minute, I found myself wondering… What the hell is happening?

Same, Jack. Same. Lol. In this book, we get a little bit of an origin story as to why the gas station is so weird. I didn’t really get it, but the guy Jack was talking to promised we’d go into it more in book four 😂 Yeah, the guy broke the fourth wall. It was great! Lol. We also learn that all this weird stuff that’s happening is part of a bigger plan. This whole time I thought this series was more character-driven, but now it looks like we have a little bit of plot going on! Even though I don’t totally understand what the heck is really happening, I am very intrigued to see where the story goes from here. We found out some very interesting things in this one, and that ending was YIKES 😬

So yeah, even though I was a little bit confused there at the end, I really loved this book! It’s really funny and I love all the characters and the wacky situations they find themselves in! There’s always a good amount of gore and the fights are really good! I wasn’t expecting it to be as heartbreaking as it was, as bleak as it got at one point, but I did appreciate it and the depth it gave Jack. I’m really looking forward to the next book and finally finding out what the heck is going on! Lol.

Have you read this book? If so, what did you think about it? If not, what do you think? Does it sound like something you might want to read? Leave me a link to your review or comment below! 😊