A BITE ABOVE THE REST

It’s Halloween every day in the town of Samhain—and not all the creepy residents are in costume.

Playing with expectations in her fiction debut, Virnig transplants sixth grader Caleb Fisher and his recently widowed mom from Los Angeles to a Wisconsin town where, to crank up the tourism, residents and buildings are dressed up for Halloween all year round. But, as Caleb quickly discovers, some of the local vampires and witches are very convincing. Could they be real? The evidence remains ambiguous (at least until the climactic hullaballoo), but Caleb has help from enthusiastic classmate Tai Thompson, who’s described as standing out from her “un-diverse” peers for being not only unusually small in stature and dressed as a fairy, but for having Asian and Caribbean heritage. Together they collect clues, dig into the town’s tragic history, and, ultimately, expose a terrifying truth. The suspense and the amusingly eerie setting make effective hooks. So do both the developing friendship and an impulsive young protagonist whose emotional vulnerability in the wake of devastating family loss and sudden uprooting masks a streak of ingenuity that comes out not only in the clutch but all along in the inventive costumes he wears to school instead of the blandly conventional ones everyone else adopts. A twist at the suspiciously tidy tail end offers plenty of enticing potential for sequels.

Thrills and chills in a gloriously goofy setting.