What's sweeter than candy? Carnage. Five years later, Violet Warren is still reeling from her roller coaster ride straight to hell as she watched her friends die one by one at the hands of a psychotic killer. She'll never be able to eat funnel cake again, much less confront the ghosts of her past. Then Violet receives a series of disturbing messages, seemingly from beyond the grave. The texts and digital candy crumbs lead to one horrifying truth: a new killer is on the loose and her cotton-candy-playbook is straight out of Violet's nightmarish past. To stop the candy-killer's protégé, Violet must return to the Poisoned Apple Carnival to put an end to this carnival carnage once and for all. But as Violet races to save the doomed seniors of this year's Scavenge, she realizes she is not the only one unable to confront the past: According to the town, the slaughter-filled Senior Scavenge all those years ago? Never. Happened.