An uneven horror story that’s better at providing chills than narrative thrills.
The Midnight Society, familiar to fans of the 1990s TV series, convenes for a second spooky story.
The protagonist of this volume is Layla, the daughter of a hardworking, cash-strapped single mom who’s cued Italian American. Fourteen-year-old Layla has saved her babysitting money to buy her sister Emily the expensive birthday present the 8-year-old covets: a custom-made look-alike doll from Ms. Mabel’s Doll Emporium. As she leaves the shop, Layla impulsively steals another doll—one that looks exactly like the one Quinn, her former best friend who moved away, was never without. Almost immediately, strange and menacing events begin to happen around Layla and the Quinn doll, while Emily grows weaker and more obsessed with her own doll. Are the dolls harming their owners? Can they be stopped? Valentine excels at conveying unsettling threats without including much actual violence, even as the dolls grow increasingly autonomous and malevolent. Layla teams up with new friend and potential crush Dylan, who presents Black, to unravel the mystery of the soul-sucking dolls and their creepy creator. Unfortunately, the author demonstrates less deftness with this element of the plotting. The supernatural mechanism at work with the dolls is murky at best, and the ultimate solution, telegraphed from midway through the book, may not surprise more perceptive readers. Layla’s family’s financial challenges are relatable and well integrated into the story.
An uneven horror story that’s better at providing chills than narrative thrills. (Horror. 9-12)Pub Date: July 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781419763472
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map.
A girl who delights in the macabre harnesses her inherited supernatural ability.
It’s not just her stark white hair that makes 11-year-old Zee Puckett stand out in nowheresville Knobb’s Ferry. She’s a storyteller, a Mary Shelley fangirl, and is being raised by her 21-year-old high school dropout sister while their father looks for work upstate (cue the wayward glances from the affluent demography). Don’t pity her, because Zee doesn’t acquiesce to snobbery, bullying, or pretty much anything that confronts her. But a dog with bleeding eyes in a cemetery gives her pause—momentarily—because the beast is just the tip of the wicked that has this way come to town. Time to get some help from ghosts. The creepy supernatural current continues throughout, intermingled with very real forays into bullying (Zee won’t stand for it or for the notion that good girls need to act nice), body positivity, socio-economic status and social hierarchy, and mental health. This debut from a promising writer involves a navigation of caste systems, self-esteem, and villainy that exists in an interesting world with intriguing characters, but they receive a flat, two-dimensional treatment that ultimately makes the book feel like one is learning a ho-hum lesson in morality. Zee is presumably White (as is her rich-girl nemesis–cum-comrade, Nellie). Her best friend, Elijah, is cued as Black. Warning: this just might spur frenzied requests for Frankenstein.
A didactic blueprint disguised as a supernatural treasure map. (Supernatural. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304460-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Deliciously dark and gripping.
Evie enters the otherworldly place called the Dark Sun Side, searching for Blight Harbor’s missing ghosts in this sequel to 2022’s The Clackity.
Twelve-year-old Evie Von Rathe returns, this time following the trail of missing ghost Florence and finding herself lured to the Dark Sun Side by ghoulish, evil Portia. Once there, Evie learns about the Radix, a swirling, black, oceanlike expanse of unforgiving magical power. In exchange for Evie’s return to the land of the living, Portia tasks her with retrieving the soul light from the center lantern of the Nighthouse. With the help of Bird, her tattooed sidekick who moves about her body at will, and a girl she meets on her journey named Lark, who is neither ghost nor human, Evie is pushed to her limits as she navigates this terrifying world on her important, soul-saving mission. Senf’s nightmarish, well-imagined supernatural landscape is original and compelling. Evie and Lark’s friendship is believably close and trusting, their shared pain and fear binding them together. Bird continues to be a scene-stealing companion, a necessary voice of reason and encouragement for Evie and readers alike. More than just a battle between good and supernatural evil, this story shows the ultimate power of empathy and tenacity. Readers will be left both satisfied by the ending and wanting more. Evie is cued white.
Deliciously dark and gripping. (Horror. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781665934633
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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