A delightfully spooky story with a heart—and hearty laughs to boot!
In this trilogy closer, a terrifying darkness threatens the town of Riverfish and is intent on consuming Thelma Bee.
When the Haunted Dungeon, a local Halloween attraction located in an abandoned military fort, starts to live up to its moniker, Thelma Bee and her pals from the Riverfish Valley Paranormal Society are on the case. They meet with Willy (the older man who runs the attraction) and his teenage helpers and explore the tunnels. There Thelma has a brush with a power unlike anything she’s experienced since learning she’s part of the ancient Disiri sisterhood. Could the Darkwood Queen be more than just a local urban legend? Following the encounter, Thelma notices alarming changes in her own personality: She’s quick to anger and even shouts at her best friend, Alexander. Thelma and the RVPS must exorcise the town of evil in time to attend their middle school dance on Halloween. This action-packed page-turner is highly entertaining, and it’s a story about self-discovery and friendship as much as it is about a haunting. Thelma and her pals face plenty of scary situations, and they must use their reasoning skills and their emotional insights to find their way through. Readers will want to read the previous two series entries to fully appreciate this one. Most characters present white, and two siblings in the friend group are Korean American.
A delightfully spooky story with a heart—and hearty laughs to boot! (Ghost story. 8-12)Pub Date: tomorrow
ISBN: 9781958051955
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Snowy Wings Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Supernatural mystery meets generational drama with hopeful endings for all.
Eleven-year-old Frank must solve a supernatural mystery to save his new home.
As fifth grade comes to an end, Frank Fernández is looking forward to finally staying put in Alabama for a second year, as promised, after a childhood spent following his parents’ home renovation work all across the country. Frequent relocation has made Frank wary of forming friendships or making plans, but his hopes for more stability are temporarily dashed when his parents announce plans to renovate a lighthouse in the Florida Keys, near where his mother grew up and his father’s home country of Cuba. Papi promises this will be their last move, though: The lighthouse will be theirs. But from their first day on Spectacle Key, things seem to go wrong: Tensions rise between his parents, and Frank’s hopes of a forever home are under threat from seemingly supernatural forces. In order to put down roots, Frank and new ghostly friend Connie, a White girl with freckles, must discover what secrets the island is hiding, uncovering Frank’s own family roots along the way. Frank is a fan of horror—he names his new Great Dane puppy Mary Shelley. But though there is some mild peril to be found, rather than a ghostly thriller, this is an appealing, lightly spooky family drama with valuable lessons for those who would hide from a difficult past instead of confronting and healing generational trauma.
Supernatural mystery meets generational drama with hopeful endings for all. (Supernatural. 8-12)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-313481-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Funny delivery, but some jokes really miss the mark.
An animal ghost seeks closure after enduring aquatic atrocities.
In this sequel to The Incredibly Dead Pets of Rex Dexter (2020), sixth grader Rex is determined to once again use his ability to communicate with dead animals for the greater good. A ghost narwhal’s visit gives Rex his next opportunity in the form of the clue “bad water.” Rex enlists Darvish—his Pakistani American human best friend—and Drumstick—his “faithful (dead) chicken”—to help crack the case. But the mystery is only one of Rex’s many roadblocks. For starters, Sami Mulpepper hugged him at a dance, and now she’s his “accidental girlfriend.” Even worse, Darvish develops one of what Rex calls “Game Preoccupation Disorders” over role-playing game Monsters & Mayhem that may well threaten the pair’s friendship. Will Rex become “a Sherlock without a Watson,” or can the two make amends in time to solve the mystery? This second outing effectively carries the “ghost-mist” torch from its predecessor without feeling too much like a formulaic carbon copy. Spouting terms like plausible deniability and in flagrante delicto, Rex makes for a hilariously bombastic (if unlikable) first-person narrator. The over-the-top style is contagious, and black-and-white illustrations throughout add cartoony punchlines to various scenes. Unfortunately, scenes in which humor comes at the expense of those with less status are downright cringeworthy, as when Rex, who reads as White, riffs on the impossibility of his ever pronouncing Darvish’s surname or he plays dumb by staring into space and drooling.
Funny delivery, but some jokes really miss the mark. (Paranormal mystery. 8-12)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5523-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
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