THE NIGHTMARE HOUSE

An anxious 11-year-old girl must save her loved ones from the soul-stealing Fear Maker.

One Halloween four years ago, Penny Hope left candy as an offering for the monster under her bed. She receives a gift in return, but it’s only after she accepts it that she realizes it’s cursed, plaguing her with recurring nightmares. In the daylight, Penny sees that everyone around her has blank, hollow eyes. She learns that the giver of the cursed gift, responsible for both her constant bad dreams and the vacant-eyed people, is the Fear Maker—and his power is quickly growing. Armed with her love of poetry and with new friend Aarush Banerjee by her side, can Penny conquer the Fear Maker before he reaps the souls of everyone around her? For much of Allen’s spine chiller, Penny’s struggles are internalized; her fear keeps her from reaching out to those around her. Slowly, she tells those she trusts most, and the narrative takes a turn, moving the needle to genuine scares as Penny and Aarush battle the Fear Maker at his terrifying haunted house. The horror aspects are immersive, but murky characterization and thin worldbuilding leave this novel feeling disjointed and faltering under its own weight. Prose and verse, including a variety of different poetic forms, are interestingly juxtaposed in short chapters. Penny reads White; Aarush is cued South Asian.

An ambitious premise that never quite coalesces.