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JANUARY 2023 YOUNG ADULT AND MIDDLE GRADE HORROR ROUNDUP

18/1/2023

January is traditionally the month for mopping up books from the previous year I read either late or did not have the chance to write-up, with a few new releases added into the mix. I have already read a number of January 2023 releases but will feature them in the next February roundup.

I usually complain about the never-ending number of sequels in children’s fiction, but for Phil Hickes The Vanishing of Aveline Jones (Aveline Jones book 3) and Lorien Lawrence’s Fright Watch book 3: Unmasked I make an exception, as both are very good third books in impressive Middle Grade supernatural series. If you do not know these books, they are definitely worth further investigation.

The other six books included are all Young Adult titles, both Holly Jackson’s Five Survive and Ravena Guron’s This Book Kills are dark thriller and are solid page-turners which will be popular with teens. Gregory Scott Katsoulis’s All Rights Reserved (Word$ book 1) was published back in 2018 but I only read it recently after a librarian colleague recommended it. It was outstanding and a great example of YA dystopian fiction, which I am surprised is not better known. Christopher Pike’s The Midnight Club was first published in the nineties and has recently been turned into a Netflix mini-series but I did not feel it had aged particularly well and this dour read was not something I would recommend.

Mary Watson follows the excellent Wren Hunt (2018) and The Wickerlight (2019) with the very clever Blood to Poison, an urban fantasy which involves complex themes connected to revenge, racial tension and family curses. Finally, Camp Kinross is the debut of Holly Louise Perry which although I struggled with in parts is still worth a look should you want to visit an American summer camp with a cool nineties vibe.

Do get in touch if there is anything you would like us to review. The books are presented alphabetically be author.

Ravena Guron - This Book Kills

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Usborne Publishing Ltd (5 Jan. 2023)

This Book Kills is the entertaining debut from lawyer, with a degree in biochemistry turned novelist, Ravena Guron. This thriller is more mystery ‘who dunnit’ than horror but has enough strings to its bow to keep you guessing right to the end (okay, I got the murderer wrong). Initially my heart sank when I realised I was about to tackle yet another novel set in a posh/exclusive boarding school, this trope (privileged summer camps are just as bad) is incredibly well trodden and it is very difficult to come up with anything new. For a change, This Book Kills is set in the UK rather than the USA which is a major plus point. Advance hype has namechecked the huge selling Holly Jackson and Karen McManus and such comparisons are not unfair and I will be interested to see if this novel attracts a fraction of their success. As well as being an entertaining murder mystery, the story also has an interesting social commentary angle as the main character is second generation Indian in a predominately white school and is on a scholarship which she is in constant fear of losing, which is nicely integrated into the plot.

The first-person narrator is quiet and studious sixth former Jess Choudhary who makes herself as anonymous as possible until classmate Hugh Henry Van Boden is murdered. Jess is the roommate of the popular Clem who has been seeing Henry on the sly. After his death Millie (his girlfriend in public) becomes the prime suspect and Jess is slowly sucked into the drama when she realises that the circumstance behind the murder is eerily reminiscent of a short story she recently wrote. What follows is a twister in which Jess comes out of her shell (too quickly to be truly believable) and goes from mousy class shadow to sleuth, whilst the threat of losing her scholarship hangs over her head and a scary secret society pulls strings from the side-lines. This Book Kills was a fun, not too deep, page-turner which should easily pull bored teens away from their phone screens.

AGE RANGE 12/13+

Phil Hickes – The Vanishing of Aveline Jones (Aveline Jones book 3)

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Usborne Publishing Ltd (27 Oct. 2022)

I was a massive fan of both The Haunting of Aveline Jones (2020) and The Bewitching of Aveline Jones (2021) and although the third outing adds nothing new to the series it was still a great read and a terrific Middle Grade entry point to horror for kids at the top end of primary school. As with its two predecessors the action takes place in the school holidays with Aveline and her mum away from home, this time visiting the house of her uncle, who mysteriously vanished some years earlier. Whilst snooping in her uncle’s study (who was an archaeologist) Aveline discovers possible supernatural activity around an ancient burial mound - and linked this with the unexplained disappearances of other local villagers. Believing her uncle is alive somewhere, perhaps trapped in another dimension, Aveline embarks upon an adventure which is her most dangerous yet.

Once again Aveline is joined by Harold, a boy she met in the first book, and combined the pair make a fine duo of brave, but innocent supernatural sleuths. All three books in the series complement each other beautifully and are wonderful escapism for younger children who love the thrill of mysteries, ghosts, solving puzzles, the excitement of strong friendships, but still give off the vibe that everything will turn out fine in the end. Young readers will undoubtedly imagine a tad of themselves in either Aveline or Harold who show a lot of backbone, common sense and bravery in their increasingly outlandish adventures.

AGE RANGE 9-12

Holly Jackson – Five Survive

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Electric Monkey (8 Dec. 2022)

I love it when deserved success comes to those I tipped years earlier! When Holly Jackson’s superb debut A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2019) was still finding its audience a book committee of school librarians I was a member of shortlisted it for the senior section of the Trinity School Book Award and the full trilogy has since become a monster success. Holly should be applauded for having the guts to write a brand-new thriller Five Survive which has nothing to do with her signature series and is another terrific page-turner. This latest novel is set on an American Spring Break road trip from Philadelphia to the Alabama coast, with Jackson surely having one eye of Karen McManus’s huge teen audience as this book shakes off the ‘small town mystery’ style which made Good Girl’s Guide so appealing. Amazingly, this near 400-page story is set over a brief eight hours, with events kicking off at 10pm with six friends (all aged 17+) heading south for some fun. Whilst on a remote stretch of the road their RV breaks down and they soon suspect somebody has shot out one of the tires. It seems premeditated as it also occurs in an area where the mobile phone service is severely lacking.

The novel is told in the third person, with Red Kenny (a girl) being the main character the story is built around. The dynamics and the interactions of the characters are absolutely crucial to the success of Five Survive, they all know each other in varying degrees and more importantly, they all have secrets. The level of tension, panic and claustrophobia was outstanding as the friends begin to bicker and realise they cannot leave the van and are trapped. But when the sniper provides them with a two-way radio, that is when the fun really begins as he teases secrets out of them, turns them against each other, as his own agenda is slowly revealed. Lots of red herrings were thrown into the mix and Five Survive keeps the reader nicely on the hook throughout the twisty second half and dramatic finish. Holly Jackson shows that she has plenty of new tricks up her sleeve and does not need to write book four in A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder anytime soon.

AGE RANGE 13/14+

Gregory Scott Katsoulis – All Rights Reserved (Word$ book 1)

Publisher ‏ : ‎ HQ Young Adult (12 July 2018)

All Rights Reserved was published back in 2018, but it never crossed my path until a librarian colleague recently namechecked it. Katsoulis followed this with the sequel Access Restricted, which is now high up on my TBR list. It is slightly reminiscent of Christina Dalcher’s smash adult hit Vox but note that Vox was published a year after All Rights Reserved and attracted worldwide attention. The concept behind the Word$ duology is terrific and undoubtedly the strongest feature of the story and is set in a world where when kids turn fifteen they then have to pay for every word they speak. Everybody has a device implanted into them which records their words (in Vox a device counts how many words women speak per day) and different words have different prices regarding their complexity. Effectively companies have copyrighted words and most people are in a huge amount of debt and rarely say anything in a grim world where everything has a monetary value. The device also records motions such as shakes of the head and shrugs, so there is no escaping the system (or the cost).

The story revolves around Speth on the day she turns fifteen and can no longer talk for free. On the same day a slightly older friend commits suicide leading to Speth taking a vow of silence which kick starts a movement in the society where she lives. We find out there are others (‘Silencers’) who do not talk and this quiet act of rebellion begins to have a more profound ripple effect. There are a couple of odd side stories, including her sister being sued for breach of copyright for looking like a film actress! I wouldn’t call All Rights Reserved an action novel, but alternatively it is a very effective bleak dystopian drama where talk really is not cheap! As Speth internally narrates the story she is great company and you will feel for her when you realise she was only called ‘Speth’ as the name was copyright free and one of the few her parents could afford.

AGE RANGE 13+

Lorien Lawrence – Fright Watch book 3: Unmasked

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Amulet Books (29 Sept. 2022)

There are far too many sequels in children’s fiction but for Lorien Lawrence’s Fright Watch sequence I am happy to make an exception to this grumble. I previously reviewed and enjoyed both The Stitchers and The Collectors, with this latest entry being perhaps my favourite of the trilogy. And from the manner in which Unmasked concludes, there should hopefully be a fourth and I say, bring it on! Part of the success of book three is the fact that Lorien Lawrence very cleverly keeps the series fresh by changing its dynamics by having the story told by a completely new character, with the two main teens from the earlier novels (Mike and Quinn) appearing in the second half. This was very cleverly handled, with other returning kids such as Lex, also appearing in support roles. However, the star of the show was undoubtedly the new main character, Marion Jones, who I am absolutely sure many shy, anxious or quiet young teens will see a reflection of themselves in.

Marion is a very gifted fourteen-year-old makeup artist, who is incredibly anxious and struggles to make friends, but is always in high demand because of her artistic skills. An approaching Halloween dance means Marion is busy making masks and helping with makeup and costumes and creates a sea-monster head (whom she calls Winston) which comes to life when the boy she has a crush on tries it on. The horror in this book was handled with a very light touch and had comedy sprinkled into the action. However, its strength was not the horror, but the fact that it was just so darn cute! The interactions between Marion (who has never been to a dance) and Tyler were wonderful, awkward and quite touching as the very introverted girl came slowly out of her shell. And existing fans of the series will surely cheer when Mike and Quinn make their first appearance and coolly help fight the effects of the supernatural Blood Moon. Absolutely wonderful in every way imaginable.

AGE RANGE 10-13.

Holly Louise Perry – Camp Kinross

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Perry Lane Press (13 July 2022)

To an adult reader of YA horror fiction Camp Kinross comes across as familiar and covers similar territory to countless other teen novels. Genuine YA readers must be beginning to wonder what the big deal of the nineties was, as so many novels are now routinely set in that period. Summer camps were also a very big deal in that era and Holly Louise Perry nicely taps into that source of nostalgia by setting her novel in a location which would be a perfect fit for a Point Horror novel if it shaved off a hundred pages. Coming in at well over 400+ pages Camp Kinross was much too long for this type of story developed around normal teen high jinks including competitive social circles, weird traditions, and classic camp activities. Because there are just so many novels with similar settings I struggled to find anything which differentiated Camp Kinross from its many competitors, even though it has a vividly described location whose murky past is slowly revealed.

The story is seen from the point of view of Maggie and Tom who have been sent to summer camp for the first time, despite believing they are too old for it. Soon they are at loggerheads with ‘The Lifers,’ a cliquey group of teens who have been chosen to stay at the camp for the entire summer. The story revolves around kids being sent home for breaking the rules, whilst Maggie and Tom suspect something more sinister might have happened to the teens. The camp dynamics was nicely portrayed, the characters believable and references to the nineties were spot on, but I found the ending to be slightly underwhelming, treading a path which was familiar and not particularly original (at least to an adult reader). However, overall Camp Kinross was a solid debut blending horror, teen angst, friendships, and dark secrets with an engaging nineties vibe.

AGE RANGE 13+

Christopher Pike – The Midnight Club

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hodder Children's Books; 1st edition (7 July 2022)

Christopher Pike may well have an exalted reputation amongst adult fans seeking nostalgia for the teen horror boom of the early nineties, but how many genuine teen readers of 2022/3 have heard of him? Very few I would wager. Originally published in 1994, a period where Pike was at his most prolific, this rerelease comes on the back of the recent Netflix adaptation of The Midnight Club, I haven’t watched it, but was amazed that they were able to expand such a teen novel expanded into a meaty ten-episode series. No offense to Pike, as he has earned his place at the top table in any serious discussions on YA horror, but the genre has moved on significantly from the storylines routinely pedalled in the nineties. Adult readers might enjoy the nostalgia of this dark drama, but in the decades since Pike was in his pomp storylines have become more complex, mature, challenging and layered than this rather dour offering of terminally ill teens which has not aged particularly well, particularly in the way HIV+ teens are portrayed.

The opening premise had a lot of promise, set in Rotterdam House, a hospice where teenagers with terminal illnesses are sent when they are close to the end of the line. The teens who live there form the Midnight Club, where they tell each other ghost stories and make a pact that the first of them to die would make every effort to contact the others, from beyond the grave. There really was not much horror (or supernatural) in this novel and the stories the teens tell each other were not remotely scary and the story of the gay teen dying came across as incredibly dated. The Midnight Club was more dark drama than horror and offers little in the way of hope and teens might find it to be a rather downbeat read and the cover/synopsis misleading.

AGE RANGE 13+

Laura Stevens – The Society for Soulless Girls

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Electric Monkey; 1st edition (7 July 2022)

My ears always prick up when a mainstream YA author takes a detour into the horror or supernatural genres and Laura Stevens makes a fine job of it. Having written three YA drama/comedies The Exact Opposite of Okay (2018), A Girl Called Shameless (2019) and The Love Hypothesis (2020) she drops two very similar teenage girls to those you might find in these three novels into a south of England countryside university. The split first-person narrative of ‘Lottie’ and ‘Alice’ is the great strength of The Society Soulless Girls, with the supernatural aspect kept simmering nicely on the backburner for the first half of the book before becoming more prominent as events spiral. As both girls were eighteen or nineteen and old enough to drink, it was also nice to read a story which was not set in a boarding school but had some similarities. Sevenoaks was mentioned several times and it was hard not to compare the elite Carvell College of the Arts to that famous boarding school.

The story starts not long after Carvell College has reopened after a ten-year closure due to a series of murders for which nobody was ever caught. Sporty Lottie will be studying English and also hopes to investigate the decade old murders due to an old family connection. She is roommates with Alice who is studying Philosophy and although Lottie tries to be friends Alice rebuffs her, seeing her as a sporty airhead. The split narrative highlights how different the two girls are and the dynamics between the pair is the highlight of the novel. Alice dabbles in something dodgy which eventually leads to ‘The Society for Soulless Girls’ and things spike when there is a fresh murder. Along the way there is a LGBTQIA+ story fitted naturally into the story.

AGE RANGE 13/14+

Mary Watson – Blood to Poison

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury YA; 1st edition (14 April 2022)

I am a huge fan of Mary Watson’s, challenging, intelligent, and immersive blend of fantasy and dark fiction and have reviewed both her previous YA novels The Wren Hunt and The Wickerlight. Both these novels are set in Ireland, where the author now lives, but her latest novel Blood to Poison takes the reader to the land of her birth, South Africa. As a Black South African Watson is old enough to have experienced apartheid and although it is not specifically discussed in the novel (nor is colour), the fascinating ‘Author’s Note’ makes it clear this is a theme and the repeated references to the ‘enslaved’ are veiled references to apartheid and slavery before that. This is one of those books which is aimed at strong teen readers and to get the most out of it I would suggest reading it very carefully, because if you fail to understand how the magical system works you will not get very far as it becomes rather dense. This is a terrific blend of urban fantasy which embraces African mythology and culture, with a strong feminist viewpoint. I would not call it an easy read, but to certain readers it will be very rewarding and popular with those who enjoyed the bestsellers Children of Blood and Bone and The Gilded Ones, which also focus on African mythology and magic.

Blood to Poison is narrated in the first person by seventeen-year-old Savannah who is told by the other women in her family that she is cursed. One woman in every generation dies young because of a generational curse which is passed down from their ancestor Hella, the enslaved woman with whom it all began. Hella's girls are always angry, especially in the months before they die. And Savannah is one angry teenager and so she fits the bill perfectly. The novel concerns the teen trying to break the curse, investigating the magical systems (extraordinarily complex), trying not to lose her cool as every fit of rage takes her closer to the edge. There is a huge amount to digest in this novel, the magic system is terrific, the love interest believable and the main character totally captivating in her battle to escape a destiny and the shadow of her family’s shared past.

AGE RANGE 14+
Tony Jones