You’d Better Watch Out  (The Blood Texts #1) by Frank Cadaver

UClan Publishing, 2025

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1916747227

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy:  Amazon.com

Nothing says the holidays like a young adult novella about a vengeful elf that indiscriminately flays anyone who misbehaves. You’d Better Watch Out is a gripping tale from the Blood Texts series that will have you turning the pages hoping for more. The author listed is Frank Cadaver, the pen name of Colm Field when he writes YA horror. This book would be a great stocking stuffer for that wacky teen that would prefer chilling horror over another rendition of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Evangeline and her friends are part of the mean girls clique at school, and after she gets in trouble for bullying the new girl, her mother and father choose different strategies to change Evangeline’s ways. Her mother tries empathy and compassion, while her dad uses a vindictive elf, the Watchful Elf, to guilt her into being a better person. There are so many parenting strategies, who’s to say which is best?

The plot seems very simple, but the author imbues it with many questions of morality. It is not as simple as goodness being good and evilness being bad. The elf punishes everyone. It is his perception that makes him act: it doesn’t matter if it was a malicious lie or a white lie to avoid hurting another person’s feelings, the actor will be punished. Everyone around the elf will be attacked; there is no way around it. Wherever Evangeline goes, the elf will follow and inflict injury on everyone around her. Should Evangeline leave her family to save them? The elf has broken many of its previous owners. Will Evangeline fall into the same fate? How long can Evangeline pretend to be good when it is against her nature? The ending is captivating- it is not just black and white, like most morality tales for young people. I like it because it suggests that in a messed-up world, the only way to deal with it is to be a little messed up, too.

The Watchful Elf is a play off the ubiquitous Elf on the Shelf that’s pulled out every December. It is poorly constructed, with felt, cardboard, and a saccharine smile on its plastic head. Kids cannot touch the elf or it loses its magic. It is so flimsy that if you were to hand it to a kid, it would be torn apart by the end of the day. Whew! Now we can keep producing this product as cheaply as possible.

The Elf on the Shelf watches kids’ every move and reports it to Santa every night. This is why it is found in a different place every morning. Every night, parents place the elf in elaborate and hilarious situations for the kids to find each morning. There is ambiguity in this ritual because the elf acts as a surveillance tool for Santa, reporting the children’s misdeeds, yet the parents are encouraged to put the elf in mischievous situations, because it’s fun to be bad. It’s very counterintuitive and promotes extrinsic motivation instead of intrinsic motivation to be good. Such are the joys of consumerism and living in a police state.

It appears the elf did not spark joy in the author’s house and has probably been lazily positioned in a guitar sound hole for multiple days, with his children complaining about the lack of magic in their household. Is this why the author has written about a murderous elf, so his children will never request it taken out of its box again? I don’t know, but in some households, putting away the Elf on The Shelf and reading this spooky novella could be the new holiday tradition.

Reviewed by Lucy Nguyen