Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Returning to Dread Wood High and being reunited with Angelo and the Club Loser gang felt so good, not to mention the force of nature that is geography teacher Mr Canton. Gus and Mr C are without a doubt my two favourite characters - they are both absolutely hilarious, (if not a little hapless!) Jennifer totally nails the perfect balance of horror and humour and her teen characters are totally on-point. Yes! I watched lots of documentaries about different types of spider and combined some of their creepiest qualities for the creature in Dread Wood. The species I used the most was the trapdoor spider - such fascinating creatures, and perfect for what I wanted for this story.
I'm embarrassed to say that I was incredibly well-behaved at school. I don't enjoy being in trouble, or feeling like I'm doing something wrong, so if I'm going to break a rule, it has to be for something I truly believe in. The only time I got in trouble was in A-level history, and that blew up into an enormous drama that resulted in me withdrawing from the class and trying to teach myself the rest of the syllabus. I got a 'B'. And I stand by my actions! With the fair arriving in town, adrenaline and excitement levels are high. But who are the people behind the super-creepy clown masks? With fights breaking out and Flinch in full force, it’s time for the final showdown at the Fear Ground. Let the REAL games begin! The 'Flinch' app craze has swept through the students of Dread Wood High. The more you scare your friends, the more points on the app you get. At first it's fun, but soon fun is replaced by fear - especially when most rounds seem to start in the eerie Dread Wood, where the teens were forced to defeat killer spiders in the previous instalment of the horror series. I appreciated that there was more to the characters than at first anticipated. They are so much more than their first takes and as they find a way to work together, all these unexpected qualities shine through. As it turns out, they all have personal struggles and it actually bonds them together as they learn more about each other. There are some pretty serious issues that they are grappling with: bullying, poverty, disability, and living up to parental pressures. It's all handled with grace and a lot of quippy humor.Angelo and the rest of the 'Club Loser' gang notice that everyone is behaving more and more strangely every day - almost as if something is taking over their brains. And then there's the freaky app notification tune, nursery rhyme 'Pop Goes the Weasel...' when the music plays, players are powerless to resist its control.
There’s a new craze at Dread Wood High. Flinch is a game of fear. The more you scare your friends, the more points on the app you get. At first it’s fun, but soon fun is replaced by fear. And Angelo and his friends notice that everyone is behaving more and more strangely every day – almost as if something is taking over their brains… Normally when authors use modern slang in their books I am kind of iffy about it because it can take me out of the story but for this book it actually worked in its advantage. Because it a group of preteen kids and that's how they talk. It also wasn't forced in and if flowed well for me.This has serious Goosebumps by RL Stine vibes. All the way through this, I kept comparing it to the earlier books in the series, mainly Stay Out of the Basement (I was going to say one or two others, but I haven't read the series in nearly 20 years so my memory is shot). It was a fast paced, spooky middle-grade read that Goosebumps and Crater Lake fans will devour. If you thought hide and seek could be dull, this book introduces a new version called Flinch that is anything but dull. Everyone is hider and seeker at once, trying to scare others with the creepy addition of the Pop Goes the Weasel song. We open with a tense game of it, and its involvement in the book only gets more sinister as unexplained events happen during it.
The book remains on school property though using it in a very different way, referencing the previous book and keeping some of the themes, but still feeling like it's own thing. A slightly-overused school with leaking taps and scuffed floors? It's both so banal a setting (most of us can see our schools in it) and yet unsettling at the same time. The use of the fair at the end was very good. I loved how apocalyptic it all went, the chaos set against a slightly sketchy, neon-light fairground. I would HIGHLY recommend this book to all, and thanks to The Write Reads tour for allowing me to be part of the tour! I looked at the cover of this book (which is gorgeous) again after I got partway through and realised that I should have noticed that there were loads of spiders all over the book. I didn’t notice this, which meant that I had a very creepy surprise when I realised that the kids were facing off against giant spiders. I absolutely hate spiders, so I was very tense – much more than a middle-grade book can usually pull out of me. It’s a sci-fi style horror with giant spiders and mad scientists, and I loved the way that it made my skin crawl. There’s plenty of humour to balance out the scares and this is the perfect book for those of us who loved goosebumps and want to relive that feeling.
By Author / Illustrator
It also home to a pair of creepy grounds keepers. Who seem to get more and more sinister as the book progresses. Why do they keep humming the Itsy Bitsy Spider?
Great Deal 
New Comment