THE YOUNG BLOOD LIBRARY'S MAY/JUNE YA AND MIDDLE GRADE HORROR AND DARK FICTION ROUNDUP

The Book of the Baku was one of the bravest and most impressive YA horror novels I have read in a good while. RL Boyle should now be on the radar of anybody with an interest in YA horror.

THE YOUNG BLOOD LIBRARY'S MAY/JUNE YA AND MIDDLE GRADE HORROR AND DARK FICTION ROUNDUP​ by tony jones 

For our latest roundup we have a terrific range of novels for you to choose from, many are ‘dark fiction’ rather than traditional horror, but don’t let that put you off, there are some real beauties listed. They are presented in alphabetical order, however, RL Boyle’s The Book of the Baku, which happens to be first, was also my favourite. This astonishingly bleak and brave debut should feature on every YA prize list under the sun. Sadly, horror and genre fiction are routinely overlooked on most stale children’s book awards, but this awesome book ticks every imaginable box. I am going to shout to the heavens about this knockout and doubt I will read many better YA horror novels all year.

However, Boyle is in fine company and there are some other outstanding books featured also. Make sure you look out for another excellent thriller from Mindy McGinnis, Be Not Far From Me, which makes we wonder why this author is not better known, particularly in the UK where she is an unknown quantity. Bryony Pearce takes us on a truly wild ride in Raising Hell and Julia Tuffs must have had a time machine as her entertaining witchy coming of age comedy Hexed, played out alongside a highly believable Everyone’s Invited scenario. Amazingly, this book was obviously written well before the whistleblowing website about pupil-on-pupil sexual abuse in secondary schools ever existed. Creepy or what? She totally nails it.
​
If you are looking to stock up books for your school or public library or seeking a gift for your favourite niece or nephew, there are many great selections here from the darker side of YA fiction.

RL Boyle – The Book of the Baku
​

RL Boyle’s The Book of the Baku is one of the YA novels of the year, but even after finishing this amazing book I’m still not 100% sure it is aimed at children? For the most part it was astonishingly bleak for a kid’s novel and although the blurb calls it “A Monster Calls meets The Shining” I would disagree and amend that to “A Monster Calls meets The Babadook” which suits it slightly better, as I could see little of The Shining in The Book of the Baku, but that is no bad thing. This highly unsettling debut novel is very much its own beast and does not lean on anything, except for the pain of broken families, isolation, guilt and tragedy. If you think this sounds bleak or heavy, do not let that put you off, Sean is a brilliant leading character who deserves your empathy. It was also fantastic to read a horror novel with a boy as a central character, these are few and far between, and one who struggles bravely with a disability, whose cause is revealed in tragic flashback.
​
The Book of the Baku plays out in two ‘before’ and ‘after’ narratives, but it is enticing unclear what happened to Sean’s mother when he arrives at his estranged grandfather’s house. A family tragedy has led to him developing a Conversion Order, which means he cannot talk, but he also has a serious leg disability which hampers his mobility and has been bullied because of it. In the past his grandad was a writer who wrote a collection of short stories about a mythical creature, called the ‘Baku’, which feeds on the dreams of children. As Sean reads the terrifying collection, he begins to lose touch with reality and the stories from the book blend into his every-day world, with some real Bababook style moments. This was one of those books where you just will the main character to confront their internal demons, and I was quite literally cheering out loud when some glimmers of light appeared in the darkness of the tunnel. In many ways the life Sean left behind was considerably more harrowing than anything the Baku could do to him and it was brilliantly written into the big reveals which come later in the plot. The Book of the Baku was one of the bravest and most impressive YA horror novels I have read in a good while. RL Boyle should now be on the radar of anybody with an interest in YA horror. AGE RANGE 11-15

---

Elley Cooper - The Cursed
​(Creepshow Collection 2)
​

In a relatively recent development, the Creepshow adult horror brand which has been reenergised by the Shudder TV channel, dipping its toes into horror fiction for children. Late in 2020 Elley Cooper released The Taker, which we also reviewed recently, and returns with her second double bill The Cursed. The cover sells them as novels, but in reality, they are two one hundred or so page novellas. Like its predecessor, this was a Middle Grade read and I would aim it at the 9-12 age group, rather than YA. These types of stories are perfect for kids who are looking for gateway horror and a few chills. They also have a cool retro feel to them, respecting the style of the original 1982 Creepshow, with both stories beginning in comic format. If you are looking for way of comparison, the stories are slightly more advanced than Goosebumps, but not as challenging as the legendary Point Horror series.

The first of the two stories was by far my favourite, with Randy and his best friend Bill going camping in the local woods in The Green Mountain Monster. Set in 1956, the boys come from rural, poor, small-town families, with Bill having an unhealthy obsession with the dangers of Communism. Things take a weird turn when the boys think they see an alien in the woods, which then follows them. It starts off as a very familiar tale but takes a few unexpected turns and has a terrific ending. The second story, The Chatelaine, was not as clever as its processor and uses the very familiar trope of a kid buying something cursed from a very dodgy shop. Sound familiar? Yes, it has been done hundreds of times. After purchasing a piece of vintage jewellery Maisie finds herself transported back to another era, where she realises, amongst other things, women were most definitely treated as second class citizens. All in all, this was a decent duology, but like its predecessor, Creepshow really needs to ramp up its scares, as there were very limited chills on offer here. AGE RANGE 9-12.

---

Sarah Govett – We Go On Forever
​

 I was a massive fan of Sarah Govett’s ecological dystopian trilogy The Territory and it has been one of the most popular trilogies in my school library over the past five years. After a two-book foray into lighter teen comedy Govett returns to dystopia, which has shades of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and from the world of YA, Louise O'Neill’s Only Ever Yours and Gemma Malley’s The Declaration. Although it lacks the edge of the O’Neill novel (which is aimed at slightly older children) it is still a highly engaging page-turner which slowly drops clues about the kind of dystopia the two characters Arthur and Alba both live in.  Told with a split first-person chapter-by-chapter narrative, the two characters do not know each other and live worlds apart, but there is something which brings them together, which lies at the heart of the novel. Arthur is sick and looking for a transplant of some kind, otherwise he will die and soon, he is also very rich. On the other hand, Alba lives in some kind of home or orphanage, where she is waiting to be chosen as the next ‘Apprentice’, but what does an Apprentice do?
​
Adult readers will probably join the dots very quickly, however, for children who are new to dystopian novels this will come across as very refreshing and a great introduction to this fascinating area of fiction. It is not action driven and as the plot moves on readers will be shocked when they realise what is in store for Alba. Although the direction the plot takes was relatively predictable, it might have been nice to see more of this society beyond the two main characters, although there is always the possibility of that in a potential sequel. Sarah Govett creates likable and believable characters and the dystopias she presents her readers with are always well drawn which present them with tough choices and are not so far fetched. AGE RANGE 11-13

---

Mindy McGinnis – Be Not Far From Me
​

I am a hugefan of Mandy McGinnis and there are few authors currently writing YA with the ability to effortlessly more around the genres as she. I first came across her some years ago with the excellent dystopian ecological thriller Not a Drop to Drink and sequel In a Handful of Dust and was happy to reacquaint myself with her latest novel, The Initial Insult in the previous Young Blood roundup. Such was my interest in her work I backtracked and read the superb Be Not Far From Me which was published earlier in 2021. As is her style, the multitalented McGinnis makes another fascinating change of direction with a rather different survival thriller. All the cliches you might expect to find in such a thriller are joyfully absent from this story, there is no being stalked by bears, hunger is a reality, and how often would you see a teenage girl bash the brains in of a possum and then eat it? Or then chop off part of her infected foot? I winced. This terrific book refuses to play by the rules and is all about characterisation, regret and survival. It many ways, I found this to be a rather beautiful experience which was threaded with melancholy.
​  
The story is a deceptively simple one. Ashley and a group of friends go camping and drinking in The Smokies, a mountain range and National Park which straddles a few American States, with the action kicking off in Tennessee. After the drinking and fooling around starts Ashley discovers her boyfriend with another girl and runs away, drunk, and in a strop. She loses her bearings, falls and badly injures her foot and in the morning finds all of her friends gone. She is lost, with no supplies, minimal clothing and, to make things worse, her period starts. What follows is a genuinely outstanding and very moving survival story, much of which is told in flashback from several years earlier when Ashley was twelve and was taught basic survival skills by a camp leader when she was on summer camp. Ashley loved Davey and never forgot him, or the skills he taught her. The story has the added spice of Ashley knowing that Davey died in these mountains a couple of years earlier (but his body was never found) and she feels his spirit watching over her. This is a non-supernatural novel, and I found this connection between Davey (who never knew she existed) and Ashley to be perfectly pitched and the ending brought a tear to my eye. This is as far away from an adventure novel as one could get and hums with authenticity and compassion. AGE RANGE 13+

---

Kristen O’Neal - Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses: A Novel
​

Although Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses was an amusing blend of teen comedy with a very light touch of horror and a larger dose of health anxieties. It has been name checked in reference to the classic film Teen Wolf, but that is somewhat inaccurate also, as it lacks any of the high school antics you might associate with the Michael J Fox film or the successful and long running TV series spin-off. That is not to say Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses is not a decent read, it might just not be the read you are expecting, it is more about family, online friendships, relationships and illness than a supernatural tale. You might say it is also about werewolves, but as this was not really a horror novel, I would question how comfortably this aspect sat with the rest of the novel. I was very interested in finding out how the story would end, in the areas regarding the relationship it was convincing, but the werewolf angle less so. If you approach this book as a teen comedy, rather than a horror novel, you are much more likely to enjoy it, as that’s where it ticks most boxes.
​
Priya has dropped out of college because of a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease which leaves her dreams of being a doctor in tatters. She returns home to her kind, but overbearing family, where she spends much of her time online with a virtual health support group and after her best online buddy Brigid drops off the radar she goes to her house, where she finds a hairy creature in the basement. This is far from your average werewolf story and its strength lies in the developing friendship between Priya and Brigid, which moves from the online world to reality and back again, with the rest of the support group never far away. A lot of the novel is written via texts from the online help group with everybody nicely trying to support each other. The book has a strong supportive message and although it tackles serious subjects, it does it with compassion and good humour. It is a rather goofy YA read which is bound to have some teens chuckling. AGE RANGE 14+

---

Bryony Pearce – Raising Hell

Since 2011 Bryony Pearce has written a number of dark fiction titles for both children and adults and when it comes to YA horror is probably best known for the excellent Savage Island (2019) which is on the Red Eye brand and which promises a sequel Cruel Castle later this year. The latest effort Raising Hell was a highly entertaining and very fast paced hoot which could be read in a couple of sittings, with the frenetic action taking place over a very short period of time. Detailed characterisation was side-lined in favour of pace, but the central character Ivy Elisabeth Mann was more than enough to jog the book along. Ivy was far your stereotypical heroine and I found myself warming to her as the book progressed.
​
Raising Hell had a terrific opening with nineteen-year-old Ivy working as a security guard in the school she attended not long before as a pupil. Why do Birmingham schools need security guards you might ask? A good question. A few years earlier there was a weird supernatural occurrence (which Ivy was involved in) which resulted in black matter being released into the world and as a result, teenagers can cast spells. Her job is to ensure nobody brings magic or dodgy books into the school, but in the opening stages somebody calls a hell dog and soon things quickly spiral as there are more creatures and a potential zombie apocalypse which Ivy is sucked into. Along the way characters are raised from the dead, Ivy’s grandmother possesses her cat, and she even loses her job. However, this girl is a real fighter and even though she is partially responsible for the pending apocalypse she was sassy, cool and engaging enough to get behind. The dynamics behind how the magic worked was really clever, and how it was connected to Birmingham was neat, and it was a perfect read for Buffy The Vampire Slayer or Sabrina fans everywhere. AGE RANGE 12+

---

Neal Shusterman – Game Changer
​

Although the prolific YA writer Neal Shusterman has never written a traditional horror novel, his work is always very dark and a superb blend of science fiction, dystopia or fantasy and I love reviewing him. He is an absolute master of the ‘high concept’ novel, with his fiction often featuring very clever and original ideas which are very easy to sell or recommend to teens. Scythe featured a type of lawmen whose main job was to cull the population by 300+ people each year and Unwind was built around children who lose the right to their own bodies (or parts of them) and have them acquisitioned by others in a dystopian version of body farming. His latest novel Game Changer is his quirky spin on the ‘sliding doors’ theme that there are lots of interconnected parallel realities which are slightly different from each other, some in very small ways and other widely different.
​
Like everything Shusterman writes Game Changer was an outstanding page-turner, with an engaging and likable main character, who was very easy to get behind, especially as his life gets very complicated. Over the first half of the novel, I loved the intricate little differences between the realities Ash finds himself in. The main character is a star player on his high school American football team and is used to taking hard hits. But after a serious knock, which looks like concussion, he wakes up from a heavy blow and suddenly his life doesn’t look quite the way he remembers it. The differences start very slow; firstly, when driving home after the match he realises that red is no longer the road sign for stop and on other occasions he wakes up to find he has a new car, different family or his girlfriend circumstances, before things get very serious as he takes more whacks. Along the way, and very cleverly, he begins to forget which his true reality is. Game Changer has a great change of pace in the second half, where the author’s imagination goes truly crazy. I loved it. AGE RANGE 12+

---

Julia Tuffs – Hexed
​

“Sabrina the Teenage Witch meets Sex Education” is a perfect leading quote for this highly entertaining supernatural comedy set on the Isle of Wight. Fifteen-year-old Jessie Jones moves to the island with her single parent mother and struggles to settle in her new school, with a few amusing mishaps along the way. Jessica believes her mother to be having a mid-life crisis, but in actual fact her mother is descended from a long line of witches, but their power is only potent when they are on their island turf (this was a quirky spin). Early in her new school career weird things begin to happen when Math geek Jessie is around, and she begins to suspect she is the cause. Sure enough, now that she is back on her family’s island, she is beginning to develop the family’s witching powers. Interestingly, this is connected to her period, so although Hexed is a teen comedy, there is a lot of open talk of menstruation. It does not particularly read like a horror novel and is more in tune with teen dramas by the likes of Holly Bourne, with a feisty and very engaging teen negotiating the dangers of high school, boys, social media and fitting in without selling her soul.

Amazingly, when we get beyond the humorous aspects of Jessie trying to get a handle on her clumsy magical skills Hexed has a powerful message which is uncannily similar to the current media stories of rape culture and sexism in British secondary schools. In fact, Hexed completely nails this subject to the wall and does it with some style and good humour whilst making revealing observations. If you’re after something similar, but slightly darker, then The Burning by Laura Bates is another top recommendation. Incredibly, when Julia Tuffs wrote Hexed the website Everyone’s Invited did not exist, but it covers the same ground as Jessie finds herself being filmed and mocked. As a result, she is shocked by the level of sexism in her school and the fact that the teachers are aware of it but do little or nothing about it. This was an interesting development which took Hexed beyond the story of a normal girl developing supernatural powers. The final sequences in the assembly hall might have been lifted from an American high school teen drama, but I was still smiling and cheering Jessie on. Go girl! AGE RANGE 12/13+

---

Sue Wallman – I Know You Did It
​

I Know You Did It is Sue Wallman’s fifth YA novel since 2016, she does not write horror, alternatively she regularly delivers high quality and very dark teen thrillers. By day Sue works as a school librarian and her daily interactions with teens really shine through in her fiction, giving it both a realistic and believable edge, which develop into compulsive page turners. I have all her books in my school library and am always happy to recommend her work to young teens. Interestingly, I Know You Did It also has a Covid-19 lockdown vibe to it, with the characters mentioning social distancing, masks and other aspects of the way we have had to live our lives over the last eighteen months. At first glance it is very easy to compare this novel with Anne Cassidy’s modern classic Looking for JJ, as it involves a teenager who has killed another child, picking up the story many years later. Once the story starts to progress it develops into a very convincing blend of thriller, drama and the anxieties brought on by social media and the fact that these days, it is very, very difficult to keep a secret. 
 
The action kicks off with Ruby starting a new school in Year 11 (age 16) and there is a cloud over the reason she has moved, with the plot dropping clues nice and slowly. All we know is that some years earlier she was involved in the death of another child and feels perpetual anxiety that her secret might be uncovered (again). Whilst she is trying to make friends a note is stuck on her locker “I know what you did” and Ruby feels instant fear and the social media aspect is cleverly explored and exploited around her dark secret. Ruby was a great character, and she was on edge for most of the novel and still feels guilt for what happened when she was small. In the second half of the novel the thriller element really ramps up and the interactions in the school and the power of social media and the gossip it feeds was particularly convincing. Along the way there was a really great twist and as you speed towards the end you will be desperate to find out who the killer is! AGE RANGE 12+

---

TODAY ON THE GINGER NUTS OF HORROR WEBSITE

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY WITH KONN LAVERY

the heart and soul of YA and MG Horror Fiction Reviews