Creepy scenarios and a serious shortage of trustworthy adults make for an enjoyably frightening tale.
Twins confront terrors in the woods surrounding their uncle’s house in horror master Stine’s latest series starter.
Twelve-year-old Betty and Billy Arnold will be staying with Uncle Wendell while their parents take a business trip to London. Running late, Mom and Dad drop the kids and their dog, Bellamy, off without staying to introduce them to Uncle Wendell, whom they haven’t seen since they were babies. The house seems empty—and spooky—and when the twins finally find their uncle, they’re immediately swept up into his frantic search for a thief who’s made off with an extremely valuable and dangerous book known only as the “scariest book ever.” But is Uncle Wendell telling them the whole story? In their quest to prevent the horrors within the book from being unleashed, they face a plethora of horrifying creatures and life-threatening situations in the isolated and eerie Wayward Forest. With more twists and turns than a roller coaster, Stine’s latest features the thrills and chills readers have come to expect from his Goosebumps books, as well as plenty of humor, too. There’s not much in the way of character development, but the perils Billy and Betty encounter are spooky enough to freak out even seasoned young horror readers. Physical descriptions of the characters are minimal.
Creepy scenarios and a serious shortage of trustworthy adults make for an enjoyably frightening tale. (Horror. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2023
ISBN: 9781339014982
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Funny delivery, but some jokes really miss the mark.
An animal ghost seeks closure after enduring aquatic atrocities.
In this sequel to The Incredibly Dead Pets of Rex Dexter (2020), sixth grader Rex is determined to once again use his ability to communicate with dead animals for the greater good. A ghost narwhal’s visit gives Rex his next opportunity in the form of the clue “bad water.” Rex enlists Darvish—his Pakistani American human best friend—and Drumstick—his “faithful (dead) chicken”—to help crack the case. But the mystery is only one of Rex’s many roadblocks. For starters, Sami Mulpepper hugged him at a dance, and now she’s his “accidental girlfriend.” Even worse, Darvish develops one of what Rex calls “Game Preoccupation Disorders” over role-playing game Monsters & Mayhem that may well threaten the pair’s friendship. Will Rex become “a Sherlock without a Watson,” or can the two make amends in time to solve the mystery? This second outing effectively carries the “ghost-mist” torch from its predecessor without feeling too much like a formulaic carbon copy. Spouting terms like plausible deniability and in flagrante delicto, Rex makes for a hilariously bombastic (if unlikable) first-person narrator. The over-the-top style is contagious, and black-and-white illustrations throughout add cartoony punchlines to various scenes. Unfortunately, scenes in which humor comes at the expense of those with less status are downright cringeworthy, as when Rex, who reads as White, riffs on the impossibility of his ever pronouncing Darvish’s surname or he plays dumb by staring into space and drooling.
Funny delivery, but some jokes really miss the mark. (Paranormal mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5523-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
Offers a hauntingly truthful view of secrets and strength.
A tale of survival, friendship, and the strength that comes from overcoming fears.
Middle schooler Jac is dealing with the fallout of a real-life nightmare: childhood cancer. But it’s not just the fear of recurrence that she has to handle, but the reality of surviving and carrying the burden of her mom’s constant worry. When Jac discovers a large house that wasn’t there before looming at the end of a street in her suburban New Jersey neighborhood, she worries it’s a hallucination, which could mean a recurrence of her illness. But after her best friend, a boy named Hazel, sees the house too, her sense of adventure takes over. Provoked by a couple of bullies who dare them to enter and then follow them inside, Jac and Hazel explore the house and are met with surprises—like a key with Jac’s likeness on it—that suggest her connection to this strange and terrifying place is personal. Before long, the kids realize they are trapped inside. Shocks follow with every new door they open as they search for an exit and discover ever increasing frights. Delightfully nightmarish visions chase Jac, offering the feel of a thrilling game with twisted and terrifying imagery, as she navigates the house, seeking to understand her connection to this unusual place in this emotionally resonant story. Characters seem to default to White.
Offers a hauntingly truthful view of secrets and strength. (Paranormal. 8-12)Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-313657-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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