Beast Face-To-Face With The Florida Bigfoot review

Beast Face-To-Face With The Florida Bigfoot arrived on my desk without any advance knowledge on my part. Truth be told, my oldest son opened the package and said, “Dad, you’ve got a book about Bigfoot!” Mind you, it’s the Florida Bigfoot, a creature that I’ve never even heard of. I’m no Bigfoot aficionado; sure I’ve seen the Patterson-Gimlin film and saw Steven Austin get carried away by Andre the Giant in that tunnel in 1976. But a middle grade book on the Florida Bigfoot must sure be hokey, right? 

No, that’s a big, Bigfoot no. Beast Face-To-Face With The Florida Bigfoot creeps mysteriously out of the first chapter and saunters along with a heavy, swampy sense of dread that’s perfect for middle school audiences and up. Author Watt Key does a masterful job of spelling out the story. It has a ripped from the headlines vibe about it that makes it as ridiculous as it does believable.   

It starts out with Adam, a teenage boy who has been orphaned by the death of his parents. It was in a tragic car accident on a quiet country road that paralleled the swamp. He’s told the police and others that he can’t remember anything, but that’s not true. His father was driving the car and he swerved to avoid hitting a huge Sasquatch-like creature who was standing in the road.  

Thankfully Adam’s uncle has stepped up the plate and has offered him a place to stay. He’s arranged for a new school and has set up his bedroom as well as he could. However, when Adam starts going to school he’s just not fitting in-he’s getting into trouble and acting out in ways that are completely out of character. 

It’s here that I must stop telling you about the plot points of the book. These points only take readers up to the first 35% of the book. The remaining 65% is so perfect, so utterly twisted that you simply have to read it for yourself. It combines elements of Deliverance, Misery, The Descent or other slow boil stories that deliver payoffs that are well worth the wait.  

Those films are scary and intended for older audiences, I know. That’s one thing that makes Beast so wonderful. It has a couple instances where there are scary descriptions of things, but it’s age appropriate for those in middle school or upper elementary. For the most part it’s a tension filled sense of mystery, and I-can’t-belive-this-is-happening as you read the book. It’s absurd to some, but it’s also a tale that people want to believe. Our kids (and me) love to think about an ancient tribe of massive Sasquatch creatures existing. What Beast does is takes that fascination and creates a story that part coming of age survival story, with the possibility of swamp Sasquatch creatures living in Alabama.  

Beast concentrates almost exclusively on one character for the entire book.  The result is a very deep dive into their personality and the surroundings around them. At times claustrophobic, paranoid and utterly insane, but, at the same time it’s always believable and very well paced. The details that Key captures in the swamp all but eek out from the pages onto your floor just waiting for those upper elementary readers and up to take a dive in the murk.

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