30SEVEN by Jeremy Robinson – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

30Seven by Jeremy Robinson
Published by Podium Publishing on February 3 2026
Genres: Adult, Science fiction
Pages: 335
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: Unique ideas and a strong first half weren’t enough to save this ultimately confusing murder mystery set aboard a UFO.

30Seven should have worked for me—on paper it’s everything I love in a science fiction horror story. But despite a strong start, it devolved into a messy, over-stuffed tale with a bunch of characters I didn’t really care about. Jeremy Robinson is a very popular author with lots of books under his belt, but this felt like the author had taken every alien abduction cliché in the book and thrown them into a blender with too many other elements. About halfway through I lost interest in both the plot and the identity of the killer, and honestly, it was a struggle to finish it.

Marcus Lockwood’s wife was murdered a year ago, and the killer was never found. Now he and his thirteen-year-old son Elias are trying to cope, so when an opportunity comes up to take Elias on a camping trip, Marcus thinks the time away will do them both some good. When they arrive, they meet a handful of other campers. Emmett is an older man who takes Elias under his wing, teaching him how to fish and offering sage advice. Gabe, Serena, Sam and Jade befriend Marcus and Elias as well, and Marcus realizes this is just what they needed.

But there are whisperings of UFO sightings in the area. Elias claims he saw Emmett walk down to the lake in the middle of the night with a “tall man.” The camp regulars who have been coming for years confirm that they’ve all seen weird lights in the sky. And then one day, twenty-eight people in the camp are abducted by a UFO, including Marcus and Elias and their new friends. One of the aliens communicates with Marcus and explains that someone is killing the aliens on his ship. When he describes the state of the bodies, Marcus realizes it’s identical to the way his late wife’s body was found. It can’t be a coincidence, and Marcus knows that the killer must be among them. The alien wants Marcus’s help: to identify and kill the killer before they claim their next victim.

First, the positives. I had a lot of fun with the first half of the story. Robinson sets up some intriguing mysteries, like how Marcus’s wife’s killer is connected to the camp. And when the aliens enter the picture, there’s even more of a connection because the aliens on the UFO are being killed in the same horrific way. We also learn about the title of the book. The thirty-seventh parallel is a real thing, an area that cuts through multiple U.S. states and countries where UFO activity is often reported (Area 51 in Nevada is within the thirty-seventh parallel, for example). The author drops a few interesting things about the number 37 in pop culture (like times where it’s used in movies), and while I found this fascinating, I didn’t really understand its significance to the overall story.

There were some nice moments on the spaceship, especially when Marcus starts communicating with an alien calling himself Kova. I found the idea of creating a story around an abduction fascinating, and eventually Kova reveals the history of the aliens and why they abduct humans. There’s a fair amount of info dumping during this section, though, and the backstory of the aliens turned out to be way more convoluted than it needed to be.

Unfortunately, as much as I loved the idea of an alien/serial killer mash-up, it never really came together for me (I think the story would have been better without the aliens, to be honest). I thought there was way too much going on, and it felt at times as though the author was painting himself into a corner, unable to resolve anything in a satisfactory way. When the killer is finally revealed at the end, it didn’t make sense at all. If the author was going for shock value, he succeeded, but to say I didn’t like the way things turned out is an understatement.

I also struggled with the characters. I wanted to feel sorry for Marcus and Elias, but I never quite got there. The alien Kova was just weird, and the rest of the side characters were never fleshed out enough for me to care much about them. Chapters from the killer’s point of view are interspersed throughout the book, and these were probably my least favorite parts of the story. The killer has an odd sense of humor that didn’t work with the rest of the story, and their voice was more of a clichéd villain than anything else.

So ultimately 30Seven was a disappointment, although other readers seem to be enjoying it way more than I did, so do give it a try if it sounds good to you.

With thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.