Arden’s high scare factor, richly drawn mountain setting, relevant themes of loss and belonging, and vividly eerie...
A winter vacation takes a terrifying turn.
Two months after their encounter with “the smiling man” in Small Spaces (2018), sixth graders Coco, Ollie, and Brian go on a ski trip. Though money has been tight, Ollie’s dad won a week at Vermont’s newest ski resort, Mount Hemlock, as an incentive for his job selling solar panels. Unfortunately, the lucky trip doesn’t turn out so lucky. On the way there, Coco dreams of a gray-faced, frozen girl who’s looking for her lost bones. When Ollie starts having similar dreams, it becomes clear that there’s a reason Mount Hemlock has never before been open to the public. The surprising arrival of a paranormal investigator named Mr. Voland offers the kids a chance to get to the bottom of things. But do they really want to know the truth about what lurks at Hemlock Lodge? With warnings like “Don’t listen to the voices,” the plot initially reads similarly to its predecessor. However, Arden creates far more than just a carbon copy in a different setting. Those who had secondary roles in the first book get deeper characterization, especially white Coco and black, bookish jock Brian (Ollie is also white).
Arden’s high scare factor, richly drawn mountain setting, relevant themes of loss and belonging, and vividly eerie descriptions evoke the very best of horror for this age set. (Horror. 8-13)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-51505-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Light on gore and corpses; otherwise a full-bore, uncomplicated shriekfest.
Does anyone who volunteers to spend a night in a derelict haunted hotel on a dare deserve what they get?
“The hotel is hungry. And we aren’t leaving here until it’s fed.” In what reads like a determined effort to check off every trope of the genre, Alexander sends new arrival Jasmine, along with two friends and several dozen other classmates, to the long-abandoned Carlisle Hotel for the annual seventh grade Dare—touching off a night of terror presided over by the leering, autocratic Grand Dame and complete with sudden gusts and blackouts, spectral visions, evil reflections in mirrors, skeletons, a giant spider, gravity reversals, tides of oily black sludge sucking screaming middle schoolers down the drain, and so much more. (No gore, though, aside from a few perfunctory drops of blood from one small scratch.) The author saves a twist for the end, and as inducement to read alone or aloud in the dark by flashlight, both his language and the typography crank up the melodrama: “He walks toward us, past the mirror, and I see it— / a pale white face in the reflection, / a gaunt, skeletal grimace, / with sharpened teeth / and hollow black eyes, staring at him / with its mouth / wide / open / in a scream….” Jasmine presents White; her closest friends are Rohan, whose name cues him as South Asian, and Mira, who has dark skin.
Light on gore and corpses; otherwise a full-bore, uncomplicated shriekfest. (Horror. 10-13)Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-338-70215-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
A promising fiction debut.
Family secrets, an unsolved bank robbery, summer on a lake, a treasure island and a first romance are the ingredients for this inviting middle-grade mystery.
Unhappy with his new life and new stepfather in Southern California, 13-year-old Trav runs away to the small town in Minnesota where his dad grew up and his grandmother lives. He quickly learns why his mother won’t talk about his father, who died before he was born. Suspected of having robbed a local bank, the man disappeared in a storm, his boat washed up on an island in the lake. Everyone figures Trav knows where the money is, a theory confirmed when some of the burgled money turns up in local stores after his arrival. Trav manages to convince neighbor kid Kenny and his hot cousin Iz of his innocence, and together, they try to figure out where the loot might have been stashed and who has sent Trav a threatening note. Careful plotting and end-of-chapter cliffhangers add to the suspense. The first-person narration suggests that Trav’s imagination has been fed by too much television, but the imagined threats become frighteningly real as the story progresses. Trav’s voice is believable, Bullard’s Minnesota setting full of convincing detail, and the boy’s hesitant romantic efforts add a pleasant embellishment.
A promising fiction debut. (Mystery. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-544-02900-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
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