This mystery shines as a foray into modern investigative journalism.
An aspiring journalist investigates a local horror website.
Sabrina Sebastian is a smart, ambitious high school freshman, determined to get a summer newspaper internship, but her cafeteria exposés and charity fluff pieces for the school paper are too stodgy. Her best friend, the spirited Evelyn, suggests that she write about the gossip surrounding Scream Site, a trendy website for amateur horror videos. Sabrina hates scary movies but is intrigued by rumors that girls have disappeared after sharing videos. Could there be a grain of truth to the terrifying footage of girls screaming for help while evading nefarious pursuers? “This is real. This is real!” whispers one girl into the camera. Sabrina turns up suspicious ties between the website and missing local girls, but her detective uncle dismisses her concerns as unfounded even as Sabrina starts to receive creepy threats. Ireland (Dread Nation, 2018, etc.) maintains a steady pace of reveals as suspicion is cast on Evelyn’s crush, an English teacher, and possibly even Sabrina’s own uncle. Horror fans may be disappointed that homage is paid to the genre without any real terror, but they will appreciate the jump scares, the untimely blackouts, and the frustration when Sabrina’s older sister, Faith, innocently decides that she wants to try to post some horror videos, too. Sabrina and her sister are dark-skinned, and Evelyn is Chinese-American.
This mystery shines as a foray into modern investigative journalism. (Mystery. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63079-102-5
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.
For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end.
Riggs spins a gothic tale of strangely gifted children and the monsters that pursue them from a set of eerie, old trick photographs.
The brutal murder of his grandfather and a glimpse of a man with a mouth full of tentacles prompts months of nightmares and psychotherapy for 15-year-old Jacob, followed by a visit to a remote Welsh island where, his grandfather had always claimed, there lived children who could fly, lift boulders and display like weird abilities. The stories turn out to be true—but Jacob discovers that he has unwittingly exposed the sheltered “peculiar spirits” (of which he turns out to be one) and their werefalcon protector to a murderous hollowgast and its shape-changing servant wight. The interspersed photographs—gathered at flea markets and from collectors—nearly all seem to have been created in the late 19th or early 20th centuries and generally feature stone-faced figures, mostly children, in inscrutable costumes and situations. They are seen floating in the air, posing with a disreputable-looking Santa, covered in bees, dressed in rags and kneeling on a bomb, among other surreal images. Though Jacob’s overdeveloped back story gives the tale a slow start, the pictures add an eldritch element from the early going, and along with creepy bad guys, the author tucks in suspenseful chases and splashes of gore as he goes. He also whirls a major storm, flying bullets and a time loop into a wild climax that leaves Jacob poised for the sequel.
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end. (Horror/fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59474-476-1
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
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