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Book Review: Shiny Happy People by Clay McLeod Chapman

 

Shiny Happy People by Clay McLeod Chapman

Delacorte Press, 2025

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593904084

Available: Hardcover, ebook edition, audiobook

Buy:  Bookshop.org

 

 

I find Clay McLeod Chapman’s work uniquely disturbing. While Shiny Happy People, his foray into YA horror, isn’t as gruesome as some of his previous projects it is a natural fit with his other work, especially Wake Up and Open Your Eyes. 

 

Kyra was abandoned by her addict mother at a young age and is now the adopted daughter of a loving family. Her father works long hours at a large pharmaceutical company, BoTanic, which employs most of the town. She has terrible anxiety and panic attacks, and a supportive “black sheep” best friend, Halley.

 

Kyra’s need for control and family history of addiction mean she’s completely straight-edge even in the face of peer pressure, so when a new party drug starts making the rounds at school, she’s one of the few who hasn’t taken it and can observe the effects it is having on the people around her. Kids who have taken the drug go into violent convulsions, followed by becoming artificially happy and calm, causing an uncanny valley effect that Kyra feels but can’t explain to the adults around her, who are also acting very strange. With the people around her all gaslighting her, Kyra starts doubting her grip on reality. The only person who seems to be on her wavelength is new boy Logan, who is clearly hiding something.

 

Flashbacks to Kyra’s abandonment in a dark room infested with bugs, mold and fungus are truly claustrophobic and creepy, On a personal level, as someone who lives with epilepsy, the descriptions of violent convulsions created a visceral response. Kyra’s description of her anxiety as “ivy threaded through my ribcage” is vivid, and when it gets entangled with already-creepy fungal horror, becomes terrifying, with its network spreading wider and wider. This horror is not limited to one school or even one town.

 

There is so much going on in this book: it comments on addiction, Big Pharma, hive mentality, peer pressure, corruption, mental health, and more, but messaging doesn’t take over the story. Chapman follows Kyra’s narrative thread all the way through at a fast pace. It’s an uncomfortable, disorienting ride, and one that’s well worth taking.

 

Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on March 12, 2026 by , Reply

Book Review: You’d Better Watch Out by Frank Cadaver

 

Cover art for You'd Better Watch Out by Frank Cadaver

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

Posted on February 12, 2026 by , Reply

Book Review: The Devouring Light by Kat Ellis

Cover art for The Devouring Light by Kat Ellis

The Devouring Light by Kat Ellis

Harper Collins, 2025

ISBN: 9780063355248

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

 

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

 

 

Posted on December 28, 2025 by , Reply
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