Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Greetings, Enchanted Ones!

I am back once more to speak about books...the good, the bad, the ugly, and in this week’s case: the horrific. That’s right, today’s genre in our YA reading journey is horror! I will start by talking about my experience reading the book Another, by Paul Tremblay, which was my assigned reading. I will also be sharing some horror/thriller recommendations, as well as some that I checked out from the my local library that I promptly rejected after combing through the pages and the unhappy Goodreads reviews. So, if you’re a horror lover, you want to be but don’t know where to start, or, if you’re my professor who has to read this regardless of her love, hate or indifference to horror, stay tuned!


Another (2025) by Paul Tremblay

I don’t recall why I initially chose this book. I remember looking up each of the choices and reading the synopsis of each of them, and I must have decided I liked this synopsis best. I don’t read horror a lot, but I do tend to enjoy it when I do. I did enjoy it. Though, I cannot say I was scared. But just because I wasn’t, doesn’t make it a bad book. For today’s review, I will cover the following elements of the book:

• The characters

• The writing/plot

• The horror
  

  
  The characters:

• Casey: our protagonist. Casey is a young boy of 13 living through the pandemic. He loves art, video games, and anime. He is a “social pariah”, after an incident that occurred over Zoom, in which he was recorded by a classmate, and the video was spread around through the school. He lost his friends, and began to develop tics. He’s your quintessential awkward teen boy protagonist, not particularly interesting, but I don’t necessarily think he’s meant to be.

• Casey’s parents: We don’t get to know them very well, but they seem to be supportive of Casey’s art, and just want to see him succeed. They make mistakes, but seem generally inoffensive, albeit, questionable in some regards.

• Ally: Casey’s sister, she’s off at college, but we get quite a bit of her through her texts with Casey. She’s a freshmen in college just discovering herself for the first time, shedding her skin and becoming a new person. She seems to enjoy alternative culture, as she is mentioned as having colored her hair previously, she gets two tattoos throughout the book, and she’s described as wearing band tees.

• The man: We learn very little about the man, only that he brings Morel (who I’ll talk about in a moment) to Casey’s house, likely made of mushrooms, and wants to grow his family, converting more and more people into mushroom people.

• Morel: The “another” in question. The other major character in the book who isn’t Casey (well, kind of...he sort of is Casey, but I digress). He doesn’t have much of a personality, especially at the beginning, because he literally needs to borrow his personality.

Writing & Plot:

The writing isn’t bad by any means, but I think it is quite subdued, and could have gone a little harder on the horror. The plot progresses at a good pace, enough to build up the story, but not so slow that readers will lose interest. The plot does it’s job, and the subject itself is quite interesting. I love the concept of the book. I felt the ending was quite rushed, and while I am not someone who believes that everything needs to be explained (in fact, sometimes over-explaining especially in supernatural horror usually makes it worse) I do wish that we as the readers could have learned more about Morel, the man, and the mushroom people. I would have almost liked the story to continue a little while longer--after Casey smashes the phone, I would have liked to see him and Morel pursue the man further, and visit the underground tunnel, and for there to be a final resolution for Morel, or at least something slightly more concrete. I think the story could have gone on a bit more. I like open-ended stories, but the end just felt rather sudden. I would have also liked to see a conversation between Casey and his parents about what happened, since it’s implied that they do remember at least some of it.

The references to different anime and video games read as cringe to me. It stuck out like a sore thumb, and it made me feel like Tremblay only included those bits to signal to readers that Casey was ‘relatable’. I think teen readers would find it just as annoying and superficial as I found it--but it isn’t book-ruining by any means.

The horror:

Tremblay has written horror for adults, which I have not read, admittedly, but according to classmates, it’s much better than Another. Another is Tremblay’s first horror novel aimed at children and young adults, and in my opinion, I think that he toned it down a little too far. I think swapping from writing for adults to children made him censor himself a little too much. This book falls under middle grade horror as well as YA, and it definitely reads as more middle grade to me (not a bad thing, I love middle grade). The best parts of the book for me were the body horror. I love the descriptions of the hypae, the loss of control as Casey slowly becomes a shell of himself, and the description of Morel standing over Casey’s bed, engulfing him in hypae. The concept of a never-ending sleepover with a boy that is clearly not human, yet you’re the only one who seems to be able to see that, is scary. But it’s glossed over. I can tell that Tremblay was going for a more subdued, unnerving type of horror more so than a jump out of your skin in terror type of horror, but he stopped a bit short. I did really like the illustrations, they added something in terms of horror, especially this one:

Overall, there were things I really enjoyed about this book. I really liked the concept, I liked the realistic bits about the pandemic, and Casey’s neuropsych testing. More than anything, I just wanted more. More body horror, more creepy illustrations, more story in general. I would say that the concept is really neat, but the execution was subpar. But overall, especially for middle grade readers, not a bad introduction to horror, especially if they are more easily scared and want something to ease into the genre. I don’t think it would hold the attention of teen readers over the age of thirteen, though.

______________________________________________________________________________________
Selecting my Horror Books:

I tend to select my books for the week on Tuesday, as it is not only one of my days off, but one of my designated study days. On this particular study day, my little brother usually joins me, and we work together at the Worcester Public Library. Our tried and true method of post-study browsing and judging books by their cover didn’t exactly work in our favor this week, as two of the three books we selected ended up being duds. I will include them as honorable mentions. The two that I replaced the honorable mentions with came from the Marlborough Public Library, and from a random book list respectively.

‍ ‍Honorable Mentions:

Goodreads Summary: FIVE friends go to a cabin. FOUR of them are hiding secrets. THREE years of history bind them. TWO are doomed from the start. ONE person wants to end this. NO ONE IS SAFE. Are you ready to play?

I chose this book because I was trying to get a variety of different types of horror/thriller. I knew I wanted at least one supernatural horror, one realistic or true crime-esque horror, and then I came across this book. I tend to like killing games, and I love a little camp in my horror, so I grabbed this one. With a 2.86 star rating on Goodreads, I was not feeling very confident. I read the first few chapters, and I loved the idea of a book revolving around a table-top game. I thought maybe the reviews were just from people who didn’t vibe with the concept, but the book quickly became a SLOG. It’s completely obvious who the killer is, and it’s basically all teen drama with very little meaningful tension, no true satisfying resolution, and unrealistic ending. I seriously don’t know who this book was for. Only thing the book has going for it is there is quite a bit of representation in it, a trans character, a nonbinary character, an autistic character... too bad they’re so unlikable as characters.

Goodreads Summary: A chilling thriller about an unlikely friendship between a true-crime fan and a former high school classmate suspected of murdering her influencer boyfriend, perfect for fans of Holly Jackson and Courtney Summers.

I chose this book as my “realistic horror” pick, seeing as it alludes to true crime, and it has a cool mixed media storytelling style with character journal pages. That’s about as far as it goes in terms of giving the book credit for creativity. The characters are painful to read, and the “twists” are obvious the entire time. Seriously, though. Why are the characters unironically saying YOLO???? This book came out in 2023! The rating is higher than the previous title (not to say Goodreads ratings are the ultimate authority), but the majority were 1 and 2 star reviews with a 3.26 overall.

‍ ‍My Actual Recommendations:

‍ ‍Where Darkness Blooms (2023) by Andrea Hannah

The only survivor from the Worcester Public Library book selection. Admittedly, this book only rated slightly higher than the other two on Goodreads, but the majority were 4 star reviews. I read through some of it, and I really liked the author’s voice/style of writing, and the concept is so cool, and the cover is gorgeous. Supernatural horror involving plants is becoming a favorite of mine, I fear.

The Reappearance of Rachel Price (2024) by Holly Jackson

This book is one that I first picked up a few weeks ago at the start of the YA portion of the class from the Marlborough Public Library. I hadn’t realized originally that we didn’t need to start building our YA book list until the following week, but in the end I am still using this book as my “realistic horror” pick, in place of Only She Came Back. So, my early browsing paid off!

Our Wicked Histories (2024) by Amy Goldsmith.

This is the only book that I’m recommending that I didn’t physically hold in my hands. After scrambling to find a book actually worth recommending after checking out some bad apples, I turned to my best friend: Penguin Random House book lists. Funnily enough, this book has a similar premise to Even if We Break. This book also features a strained group of friends spending a weekend together in a haunted place. I guess, not a very original concept, but this one does a much better job from the excerpts I’ve read online, and the reviews that I’ve combed through, and not that it matters, but…it certainly has a prettier cover.

Well, then! This was certainly an interesting week in terms of recommendations. But I have to say that I am excited for what I will discover and bring to the table in the coming week. Stay tuned for romance week! But until then, I must bid you farewell.

Sincerely,
The Keeper of the Enchanted Library