Ben Acker

The reader finds a letter addressed to them explaining how a previous occupant of that room had also been lured in from the street by the unusual home and is now being held captive by vampires, but learned that they can keep the vampires at bay by entertaining them with scary stories. After this opening letter, the book proceeds with numerous short stories, often only a few pages long, and occasionally interspersed with more missives from our narrator. At first the stories seem completely unconnected, but over time they start to intertwine with unexpected twist and turns. Did the narrator ever manage to escape the creepy home? And will you the reader also share their fate?

I was interested in this book because I enjoyed the author’s podcast, The Thrilling Adventure Hour, which is made up of numerous short tales, including a supernatural one that is ultimately more witty than scary. I feel that summation is a fair assessment for the stories in this book as well, although the audience here is in theory supposed to be children rather than adults. The tone of the stories has a snarky edge that reminds me quite a bit of the A Series of Unfortunate Events books, so I could potentially see some overlap in those readers enjoying this as well. Mostly the stories remain more silly than anything else, but they do dabble in the macabre so it’s not a read for very sensitive children. Again, I almost feel that adults are more of the audience as there are fun little references to classic campfire and scary stories that we heard growing up. For instance Alan Schwartz‘s story of the woman with the red ribbon around her neck, which traumatized the whole generation of small children, becomes the butt of a joke here.

All in all, this was an entertaining enough read, but I feel as though the audience is a bit niche. Black-and-white illustrations peppered throughout don’t necessarily add much to the overall storytelling, but they break up the text so that this already short book reads even quicker.… (more)