THE CHANGING MAN

Unsettling rumours swirl in the privileged halls of Nithercott Academy. Students are disappearing and if they return at all, they’re uncannily changed.

As figures lurk in the shadows, watching and waiting, new student Ife will do whatever it takes to survive.

But when the scales of power are tipped against you, what is the cost of fighting back?

*sigh* where do I even start with this? 🥴

(First of all, I actually got this book while someone else was after it. When I put it on the counter, the sales assistant looked at it for a minute and was like… “there it is.” He then told me another employee had been frantically searching for it for a customer, but couldn’t find it because I’d been walking around the shop with it. I could have missed out! Now I wish she’d got to it first.)

You might look at that cover and think “ooh spooky!” Because I certainly did. But it isn’t. I also thought it was YA, but it isn’t that, either. It’s actually a children’s book, even though the characters are 16/17, but that’s fine too, because kids’ books can still be creepy, and I mean, just look at the cover!

Ife Adebola is a new student of Nithercott School as part of their Urban Achievers Programme. As one of the few black students there, and not being financially well off, she doesn’t feel as though she fits in with the other students. She also misses her best friend, Zanna, who she can’t contact when her phone gets confiscated. (And yes, you’ll wonder why she doesn’t use the School’s internal facetime system to contact Zanna like she does her parents, but that would be a glaring plot hole so we won’t talk about that).

As luck would have it, another Urban Achiever, Bijal, is determined to befriend her, not respecting the fact Ife doesn’t want anything to do with her, and pissing me off in the process because she just won’t leave well enough alone. She even has the audacity to claim Ife makes everything about her, and doesn’t care about anyone but herself. To which Ife replies:

You’re the one who chose to try and make me your friend any way possible. That’s not how friendships happen, Bee. You can’t make people like you. It’s suffocating!

And I was like yes! You tell her, Ife. And I hoped she’d be rid of her for good and leave it at that, but no. We get a very sudden turn around from Ife, and then they’re mates. Bijal reads horoscopes and looks into conspiracy theories, but won’t believe in The Changing Man as a supernatural being.

Ife and Bijal also befriend Ben, whose brother mysteriously disappeared during the prologue, and who Ben has been trying to find ever since. And you’d think the serious nature of a missing sibling would make a character sullen and distracted, and for the first five minutes he is, but the rest of the time he’s played off as a silly boy who’s a little odd, and keeps strange things in his pockets. Like he’s the younger version of Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter. He’s also called “Intellectually intimidating” by the booksmart Bijal, despite the fact that during the prologue, he was texting his brother to help him cheat in his English assignment. At least unlike the gaslighting Bijal, Ben has a nice word to say for Ife, calling her ‘determined and brave,’ though what he’s basing that on, I’ve no idea.

In part, because Ife suffers from anxiety, and I could believe that’s what makes her stutter at the start of almost every sentence, if only she was the only one who did it. And speaking of repetitive behaviours… Ben smirks. All the time, and especially at his ‘friends’ Ife and Bijal, which I found an odd writing choice from Oyemakinde. Smirking is usually a negative response, so it reads as if he’s looking down on, or laughing at them.

Ife’s interest in anything Changing Man related begins when one of her only friends at the school, Malika, begins behaving oddly. Choosing to hang out with girls she’d made fun of before and taking all her earrings out. I think that’s it. To be honest, as an inciting incident, it’s a pretty weak one. I don’t think we saw enough of Malika in the book to warrant it having that much of an impact on Ife. She’s supposedly so concerned about Malika, but there’s only a brief exchange about nothing serious, where she doesn’t show any concern…then nothing. She’s not even background noise for the rest of the book.

I got so bored reading The Changing Man, that I was tempted to DNF. The premise was interesting, but bore little resemblance to what you actually get. The plot starts to move forward toward the end (the point at which you’re already bored silly) but that’s where it really feels like a kids’ book. There’s a villain who, out of nowhere, starts speaking in rhyme, bad guys who get taken out by pickle juice, of all things, stupid flower names, and a blatant ripoff of Animorphs.

The pacing throughout is slow, with no atmosphere or creepy setting to make up for it, and I can’t believe anyone in the children’s age group would find this engaging. As an example, here’s the type of description you get.

To my left there are stairs. We climb them and reach a shallow tunnel opening. Walking through, we come out into a forest of shrubbery dappled with colour. Out ahead is a black door with golden details. It stands freely with nothing seemingly around it. There’s a rustle to my left.

Wow. Engaging.

On the writing style the word ‘glorious’ gets said by at least three different characters, there are at least five instances of missing full stops, one instance of two commas used consecutively, and for an English writer writing about English characters…American words?? (Yams, bangs, and cotton candy). There’s also a page where Ife kicks off her shoes, and then on THE VERY NEXT PAGE, she kicks off her shoes. And for the love of god, if a character frowns, just say that! Someone ‘squishing their eyebrows together’ sounds cute and different the first time, but not every time, and from every character.

The beginning of The Changing Man had the tiniest hint of One Of Us Is Lying with a passing resemblance to The Loop, and inspiration from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (and Animorphs, clearly). But The Changing Man wasn’t creepy or suspenseful. If you want that, read The Call.

I’d been excited to read this one for Halloween, but the only spooky element came from the cover. It was slow, boring, and a struggle to get through.

MINA AND THE UNDEAD

Mina arrives in New Orleans to visit her estranged sister, Libby. She loves nothing more than a creepy horror movie and can’t wait to explore the city’s darkest secrets – vampire tours, seedy bars, spooky cemeteries, disturbing local myths…

Mina lands a part-time job at a horror movie mansion and meets Jared, Libby’s gorgeous housemate and fellow horror enthusiast. But the perfect summer bliss is broken when she stumbles upon the body of a girl with puncture marks on her neck, clutching a lock of hair that suspiciously resembles Libby’s.

Someone is replicating New Orleans’ most brutal supernatural killings. Mina must discover the truth and prove her sister’s innocence before she becomes the victim of another myth.

IT’S HALLOWEEN! 🦇🎃

And for my spooky season read, I read Mina And The Undead because hello? The cover? It’s nineties, it’s Blockbuster VHS nostalgia, the detail is *french kiss* so thumbs up to Becky Chilcott for designing the cover.

Speaking of the 90s… I was kind of hoping the book would be more Buffy-style vampire slaying from the get-go, but for the longest time there weren’t any supernatural elements at all. A lot of the plot revolved around learning about past murders that had happened in the area a long time ago, and the prospect of their being someone copying these murders to look like they had been committed by actual vampires. (A good idea, but not really what I’d wanted to read, so I was a bit dissapointed) LUCKILY there are actual vampires in the second half of the book, where the plot starts to pick up.

After a brief bit of internal musings to establish her life long love of vampires, the story begins at the doorstep of the Mansion of the Macabre, where Mina’s sister Libby works. They meet Jared at the doorstep, and the book begins. Personally it felt a bit sudden. There was no buildup to sort of ease you into the story, you know? (And speaking of Libby…despite being reminded she had the same dark curly hair as her sister, I couldn’t for the life of me picture her that way. When I tried, I accidentally turned them into identical twins. Mostly, I imagined her with short blonde hair. I put it down to recently watching The School for Good and Evil.)

As there’s the mystery element that runs through the plot, we do get a bit of trudging to and from the police station and being talked to by the police which, although probably in an attempt to give it some realism to police procedures, slowed the pace. The pacing throughout was a little hit and miss, the slower establishing beginning with teases of murder that quickly get brushed to the side. A lot of diary entries – all a bit passive, (though possibly a reflection of Mina’s – not to mention Amy’s – love of Interview With a Vampire? I’ve never read it, so idk.) I habitually pause halfway through a book to see how it’s going interest-wise, and it wasn’t looking too good at that point. Fortunately it’s one of those books that does improve the further in you get, and there are a few twists near the end.

There’s a love interest which isn’t anything serious (they’ve just met and barely held a conversation?) and it develops into something stronger toward the end of the book which felt unearned.

Overall, it was an ok read. I wasn’t really sold on the motive of certain characters (definitely the book’s weakest point), and given some of the source material, it could have gone a bit darker, and there weren’t any creepy elements that I’d been hoping for. It gave the promise of a 90s throwback but like I’ve seen in other books, you don’t really get immersed in the time period. There are a couple of popular TV shows and song titles dropped in, and hey! It’s the 90s! They’re always heavy handed on the pop clutre references, and it feels forced.

I thought Mina and the Undead would be a bit creepy or spooky, but it was neither, and just as the plot would feel like it was starting to go in that direction it would stop, and we’d get familial drama or a long walk somewhere. It was definitely mild, especially for a book about fans of the vampire and horror genre. Not to mention the fact the supernatural elements are all based on actual myths! Could do well for a younger readership.

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

THE LOOP

Something sinister lurks beneath the sleepy tourist town of Turner Falls nestled in the hills of central Oregon. A growing spate of mysterious disappearances and frenzied outburst threatened the towns idyllic reputation until an inexplicable epidemic of violence spills out over the unsuspecting city.

When the teenage children of several executives from the local biotech firm become ill and hyper-aggressive, the strange signal they can hear starts to spread from person to person, sending anyone who hears it into a murderous rage. Lucy and her outcast friends must fight to survive the night and get the hell out of town, before the loop gets them too.

My final read for the spooky season is for fans of Charlie Higson’s The Enemy series, and especially fans of Paedar O’Guilin’s The Call duology. The Loop takes place in Turner Falls, a popular tourist town which plays up the class divide between the rich and poorer households of the area, as well as the white kids and POC of which the protagonist, Lucy Henderson (aka Lucia Alvarez), and her best friend Bucket (aka Bakhit Marwani), both belong. To further highlight the class divide, we’re introduced to Chris Carmichael who lives in a trailer in the woods where people are known for growing meth, and Jake Bernhardt, from the more illustrious Bower Butte, where his family own so much land they’ve adapted a large chunk into a racetrack for his remote control cars. The white kids are rich and mean, and Lucy and Bucket have plans to skip town as soon as they finish with school. In most cases where a character is presented as something “Other”, it’s because they’re in the minority, but in this instance, it’s the kids who make up the majority, cruel and dangerous and alien from what we’d consider ‘normal’ behaviour. And what could be worse than school bullies who become a thousand times meaner? Who have carte blanche to do as they please?

Because it really kicks off during a party in the caves, where it’s dark and eerie and frightening after the attacks start. And be warned if you’re claustrophobic, because Lucy gets confined to a small tunnel, (and I was getting serious MRI flashbacks. I had to put the book down for a sec and remind myself I was in the living room lol.) It’s the way a lot of the kids are happy in their violence that reminded me so much of The Call (honestly if you haven’t read it you should) and although the protagonist of The Call (can’t remember her name) is trained in the way of staying alive in life threatening situations when there’s no one else to help her, Lucy takes to it like a duck to water, almost relishing the violent acts she uses to stay alive (not to mention all the graphic scenarios she likes to play out in her head). We get a car chase, which, honestly? lasts a little longer than it needed to, and then for a situation that is city wide, we’re relegated to a couple of buildings on the outskirts, and more driving in the car. I would have liked to see a bit more of the city and the people in it. We hear that the bad guys are everywhere, but don’t really see much of it.

Violent acts and car chases take us up to Part Three of the book, where the narrative takes a bit of a shift into sci–fi territory. We’re introduced to a character who explains the dangers taking place, and then another character is introduced for much the same reason, of filling in the blanks. Obviously it’s necessary to include for the reader (teenagers don’t start acting like homicidal phones for no reason!) but it did feel a little heavy on the info at times, and I think I zoned out here and there. Fortunately we get a brief summary that clears everything up nicely.

Untested, highly experimental half-octopus mind-control implants.

So there you go! The plot in a nutshell lol

I was keen to get back to the dangers of the first half of the novel, but I don’t think it quite got there. But it was good to to learn the reason why everyone was hyped up on being extra nasty, and the fact it’s all down to one person in particular. I don’t want to spoil too much, but if you’ve seen the Doctor Who episode The Empty Child, it’s basically a twisted version of that.

All in all, I thought it was a pretty good book!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

AND THEN THERE WERE NONE

Ten strangers are invited to a tiny island, each for a very different reason. Over dinner on the first night, a recorded message accuses each of the guests of a serious crime, all of which they deny. Then, by the end of that evening, one of the group is dead. A storm rises – now no one can come or go from the island. Then another dies, and another.
The killer has to be one of them – but which one?

Up until now, I’d only read two Agatha Christie books, The Body in the Library and Dead Man’s Folly. I was keen to read her best loved work And Then There Were None (as decided by a global vote for “world’s favourite Christie”) after learning that every/most characters get killed off by the end, as opposed to the usual one or two victims (although if there’s one failing I have to put at Christie’s doorstep – as I found from reading the two other books – it’s that she likes to introduce a large host of characters in one go, and that’s it. You either remember names and faces, or you don’t) but it’s the more the merrier as you read along in avid anticipation to find out who’s next, and how they’ll meet their bitter end. It’s all very Final Destination lol. No wonder it’s everyone’s favourite Christie novel! Especially when you find out the island can get cut off for up to a week in bad weather, so you just know that’s going to happen, and as an additional little tease, they’ve all been supplied with a copy of a poem in their bedrooms:

Ten little soldier boys went out to dine;

one choked his little self and then there were nine.

Nine little soldier boys sat up very late;

one overslept himself and then there were eight.

Eight little soldier boys travelling in Devon;

one said he’d stay there and then there were seven.

Seven little soldier boys chopping up sticks;

one chopped himself in halves and then there were six.

Six little soldier boys playing with a hive;

a bumble bee stung one and then there were five.

Five little soldier boys going in for law;

one got in Chancery and then there were four.

Four little solder boys going out to sea;

a red herring swallowed one and then there were three.

Three little soldier boys walking in the zoo;

a big bear hugged one and then there were two.

Two little soldier boys sitting in the sun;

one got frizzled up and then there was one.

One little soldier boy left all alone;

he went and hanged himself and then there were none.

Foreshadowing abounds! Also…chopping yourself in half? hanging yourself? what a lovely children’s nursery rhyme lol. And Then There Were None is fast paced and observed from each character as the body count goes up, alongside their fears and paranoia, as it’s quickly established that they’ve been called to the island under false pretences.

As the honourable Justice Wargrave puts it:

Oh, yes. I’ve no doubt in my own mind that we have been invited here by a madman – probably a dangerous homicidal lunatic

(Which is why I thought it was funny Mr Rogers kept working as a butler for the other guests. Like whoever hired him plans to kill him eventually? Why is he still being the butler to these people?? Especially after his wife is killed! (spoiler, soz)

The isolated setting of Soldier Island is atmospheric and suspenseful, and gets pretty dark toward the end, which I didn’t expect from an Agatha Christie novel. I did think by chapter fourteen I’d worked out who the killer was (nope) so I’d say for anyone who hasn’t read it yet, you’re best bet is to pick a favourite character and just hope they make it to the end. And Then There Were None is not only Agatha Christie’s best selling novel, but it’s one of the most popular books of all time, so you should absolutely read it. And then watch the film, which is what I plan to do.

There was something magical about an island – the mere word suggested fantasy. You lost touch with the world – an island was a world of its own. A world, perhaps, from which you might never return.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

THE RECKLESS AFTERLIFE OF HARRIET STOKER

When Harriet Stoker dies after falling from a balcony in a long-abandoned building, she discovers a group of ghosts, each with a special power.

Felix, Kasper, Rima and Leah welcome Harriet into their world, eager to make friends with the new arrival after decades alone. Yet Harriet is more interested in unleashing her own power, even if it means destroying everyone around her. But when all of eternity is at stake, the afterlife can be a dangerous place to make an enemy.

I can’t remember the last time I read a ghost story, and it’s been even longer since I’ve read an unlikable protagonist, which makes Harriet a nice change from the demure good girl that’s so often present in YA fiction. The novel takes place at Mulcture Hall, and old university halls of residence that is full of ghosts because fun fact, ghosts can’t leave the places where they died! and in 1994 every student living in the halls died mysteriously in their sleep, setting us up with our first point of intrigue – how did all those students die? It also makes Harriet’s situation that much worse as she lives alone with her grandmother following the death of her parents, and she’s desperate to find a way to get back to her. We feel her desperation and root for her to succeed, even admiring her brash, I-don’t-owe-you-shit attitude to these undead strangers she owes nothing to, and honestly you can’t blame her. On their first date, Kasper thinks

This was it; he could feel it. She was finally connecting with him; looking at him like he was someone. Her someone.

This was only a couple of days in. They’d barely had a conversation between them that wasn’t telling Harriet how the ghost world works. So intense is probably an understatement. It’s definitely unfair to put that pressure on her. And then we have Felix, instantly jealous of the attention Harriet’s unwittingly getting from Kasper which leads to him being untrustworthy of her, and Leah, who follows Felix’s lead just because. Rima is the only one gracious enough to give Harriet a chance before making snap judgements, but of course it’s been established she’s the character who insists on seeing the good in everyone, so what she says can be disregarded. And they don’t give Harriet much time to process her death, especially considering Felix’s admission that it had taken him at least a year to come to terms with being dead, and there they were, wondering why she wasn’t over it already after a full twenty four hours.

LOCK EVERY DOOR

No visitors.

No nights spent away from the apartment.

No disturbing the other residents.

These are the only rules for Jules Larson’s new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan’s most high-profile private buildings and home to the rich and famous.

Recently heartbroken and practically homeless, Jules readily accepts the terms. When a neighbour confides the Bartholomew’s dark history Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story – but the next day, her new friend has vanished.

And then Jules discovers that her friend is not the first resident to go missing…

Jules is a lonely girl down on her luck who doesn’t have any family, and her best friend has gone off somewhere remote with no phone service for an extended holiday. Her boyfriend’s a cheat, and she’s lost her job. She’s all alone. Whatever will she do? When she sees a nondescript advert in the paper for an apartment sitter, it couldn’t come at a better time, and even better, it’s at the Bartholomew! A gothic landmark and the location for her favourite novel Heart of a Dreamer. There are two other apartment sitters, Dylan and Ingrid, who live on separate floors, while the rest of the apartments are taken up by its old and extremely wealthy residents. Of which we see four. (It would have been good to see more people, just a few stock characters coming and going and walking the hallways to stop the Bartholomew feeling so empty, as it often did.)

She meets Nick, a nice guy, helpful and flirty and HOT, who does a one eighty when we find out he’s not such a good guy after all. I mean if he had a moustache, he’d be twirling it. And I mean, yeah that’s a spoiler…but is it? Because here’s the thing.

[Warning: absolute spoilers below. Also this is where I’d add a page break, but I don’t know how to do that now since the update. Thanks, WordPress!]

If I read something that seems an obvious cliché (especially in a thriller/mystery) I assume it’s intended purpose is to throw the reader off. Except when it comes to Lock Every Door, it is absolutely a paint-by-numbers/no surprises here type of book. When Jules learns that her immediate neighbour is not only a doctor but a surgeon, you’d think that would be a bit too obvious if he was the bad guy, right? But no, he is in fact the bad guy.

It’s the same with the main plot point. Early on in the novel we learn that a) there’s a surgeon in residence b) most if not all the occupants are old and c) they’re filling up the rest of the rooms with young, unattached people who are down on their luck, and that no one will notice if they suddenly go missing. Everyone reading Lock Every Door will come to the same conclusion that I did, which is that they’re performing operations on homeless runaways to benefit the rich and elderly with their failing health. The trouble is, we learn this quite early on. Before the characters themselves, even. (Jules and Ingrid think the residents are into devil worship, at which point I was like seriously? My idea was better than that! So it was a relief to find out my idea was actually the right one…but also, not really? Because that was the obvious answer.) Maybe it’s me being more familiar with mysteries than I am with thrillers, because I was expecting more of a whodunnit vibe. Knowing what’s happening so early on makes the suspense fall flat, as there just isn’t any.

There is some level of tension in regards to how Jules feels about the place, helped along by weird wallpaper and strange sounds in the night, but a lot of emphasis was on past tragedies at the Bartholomew that Sager was trying to sell as spooky beginnings for the apartment block, but it doesn’t really come off that way unless you know the story in full, because until you get to that point of knowing everything, they’re unrelated tragedies, which you’d think would be how Jules and Ingrid view them. But then again…Jules is an idiot.

She’s an idiot when she sends frantic texts to Dylan who she hasn’t seen in a while, and who hasn’t been answering any of her messages. And she keeps tying to contact him despite having gone through the same thing with Ingrid, and knowing how that turns out. I was mostly baffled when, after learning her neighbour’s a serial killer, she manages to fall asleep. Sorry but if I know a there’s a murderer next door, I’m not closing my eyes to blink. And finally, the police. She had good reason for not being believed the first time she goes to them for help, but

“Do you really think they’ll help? We have nothing to go on but a vague suspicion that something bad happened to Megan, Erica, and Ingrid.”

What you have Jules, is three missing people instead of one, and all of them from the same apartment block. I’m pretty sure you’d have their attention.

The climax for Lock Every Door was good, fast paced and full of tension, but maybe a little quick to resolve? I also expected the title itself to hold more meaning than it did. ‘Lock every door’ suggests multiple doors that each have to be checked, maybe she forgets to lock one of them…and that’s how someone gets in! There is a secret entrance, but it’s not like it was a door in the wall, or even something she knew was there (so the title as advice is kind of pointless).

Lock Every Door is an okay novel. It’s an easy read. Like I said, paint by numbers. I think it would suit readers of Karen M. McManus, if they’re looking for other YA/NA thrillers to try out.

2.5/5