middle school horror | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Book Review: The Devouring Light by Kat Ellis

The Devouring Light by Kat Ellis

Harper Collins, 2025

ISBN: 9780063355248

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Another entry in the growing field of horror/thrillers for the YA crowd, The Devouring Light does it right. It’s a good read for the young ‘uns, (this one would be about junior high to early high school level) but it’s also plenty of fun for adults. In other words, for parents that want books they could read and actually have fun TALKING about with their kids, this would be a good choice. It’s what you want– a good plot, quick pacing, and lightweight enough that it can work with the short attention spans of kids today.

Despite being an adult herself, author Ellis has a good grasp on how to write younger characters, as the book’s protagonists are ones that kids can easily relate to. Here, they are constantly relying on their phones (until they have little choice), concerned about their social media feeds, worrying about what to post next, etc. The book is about a group of five young wannabe rock stars (well, four, and one who actually is one) riding the tour bus to their next show. The bus gets waylaid and crashes, and the characters find themselves taking shelter in a house in a swamp called the Light, which is one of those urban legends that everyone has heard of, yet of course no one has any first hand experience with. The story is written in the present tense, which seems to be one that again, younger readers prefer (older grouches like me have a tougher time with that format). It does seem to work for the story, though.

So… they are stuck in the house, with no contact with the outside world, and weird things happen. Eventually the mystery of the house starts to unfold, complete with nice, straightforward plot devices that don’t need to rely on a gory mess: some creaking sounds, weird footprints appearing, creepy mannequins, and so forth. Nothing really new, but it’s stuff that still works well, so why try to reinvent the wheel? The story’s narrative is nicely intercut throughout, with chapters that consist of police interview transcripts and transcripts of recovered video footage that do a nice job of providing the backstory for the plot. Splitting the narrative into different formats will work well with today’s young readers, the variety keeps it from being uniform. Again, it’s about appealing to your target audience. There’s enough depth to the characters, and enough happening that the younger crowd should easily stay interested in this to the end, and it will work for adults too. The characters do occasionally demonstrate a lack of deductive reasoning that adult readers will consider foolish, but it doesn’t detract from the quality of the story. The ending is a nice wrap up, that ends with a good bang, and it is a rather clever way of stopping the house from devouring all the characters. Chances are, the majority of readers won’t guess it, and that’s what you want in a mystery.

Bottom line here: it’s good for all ages, starting with junior high school aged readers, and is certainly a good choice for parents and teachers trying to find some way to keep kids off their phones, even if it’s only a few short hours. Recommended.

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Book Review: Gravebooks by J.A. White

Gravebooks by J.A. White

Katherine Tegen Books, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0063082014

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

In this sequel to Nightbooks, Alex Mosher wakes up trapped in a nightmare of a strange graveyard of stories, commanded, mysteriously, by the witch Natacha (who kept him captive and died during his escape in the previous book), and her jackal friend Simeon. Each of Alex’s unfinished story ideas are buried in a grave.. Natacha tells Alex he needs to dig each grave up and open the coffin. Inside each coffin is a blank book. Alex has to take the book out and jump down into the grave world to finish the story. When he finishes, the book bursts into flames, but the text of the story is transferred to the world above as the grave world crumbles. Telling the story causes a flower to grow: the better the story, the more unusual the flower.

Natacha and Simeon kidnap Alex’s friend Yasmin to threaten Alex into doing his best work, but he makes a deal with them that if they leave her alone, he will write them stories every night.. Yasmin feels responsible for Alex’s situation, and seeks out another fairytale witch, Maria Goffell, doomed to cut the hair of the dead. Maria tells Yasmin she will need objects that represent Yasmin’s greatest fears, and Yasmin realizes she will have to return to Natacha’s apartment, where she and Alex were imprisoned in Nightbooks. Yasmin finds items in the apartment she can use and is able to defeat Natacha, finally. Maria and Yasmin finally trap Simeon, and Alex is able to escape, resurrect his friendship with Yasmin, and defeat his writer’s block, for the price of a story read to Maria.

This had a slow start, but picked up fast, and was a great companion to Nightbooks, which I cannot recommend enough to horror-loving middle-graders. J. A. White knows how to write nightmares.

White also name-checks the authors from his dedication: Bradbury, Matheson, King, and Jackson are all Easter eggs in the book, making this a fun book for adults as well. It’s a great book for horror-loving parents to read with their kids. Nightbooks was made into an excellent movie: I hope Gravebooks gets a similar treatment. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski