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A review by pwbalto
The Book of Bad Things by Dan Poblocki
3.0
Do we still have Fresh Air Kids? I guess so. Well, Cassidy is one. Every summer she leaves her eccentric mom in her Brooklyn apartment and travels by bus to Whitechapel, NJ to live with Joey, his older sister Deb, and their parents. But this year, nobody's there to pick her up, leaving her feeling insecure and unwanted. Even worse, Joey, usually her best summer buddy, is hostile and uncommunicative.
Why? Well, there's a dead dog, and a dead neighbor, and soon enough there are ghostly appearances and a couple more deaths, and what do you know, it's up to Cassidy, Joey, and their new friend Ping (Ping?) to investigate and halt the increasingly dangerous supernatural doings in Whitechapel. This is legit scary paranormal stuff - none of that Scooby Doo evil real estate developer BS, which, I have to admit, I kept waiting for.
There are echoes of Poltergeist and It in this suburban nightmare, but I was most reminded of Peter Straub. The death scenes, in particular, are drawn with Straub's knack for using setting to quickly define a character - and then terrify the crap out of him or her before that smash cut to black.
Why? Well, there's a dead dog, and a dead neighbor, and soon enough there are ghostly appearances and a couple more deaths, and what do you know, it's up to Cassidy, Joey, and their new friend Ping (Ping?) to investigate and halt the increasingly dangerous supernatural doings in Whitechapel. This is legit scary paranormal stuff - none of that Scooby Doo evil real estate developer BS, which, I have to admit, I kept waiting for.
There are echoes of Poltergeist and It in this suburban nightmare, but I was most reminded of Peter Straub. The death scenes, in particular, are drawn with Straub's knack for using setting to quickly define a character - and then terrify the crap out of him or her before that smash cut to black.