Publishers Weekly
04/15/2024
Three teens return to a haunted building following the traumatic events that occurred there in this harrowing debut. Two years ago, 16-year-old aspiring ghost hunters Riley Fox, his boyfriend Ethan Hale, and friends Vee Cho and Colton Pierce broke into Saint Dominic Savio’s School for Troubled Youth, the site of an unsolved disappearance of a priest and five boys in the 1980s. Ethan vanished without a trace, and Riley bears deep facial scars from injuries he received during his own perilous escape. When ghost hunting television superstar Jordan Jones arrives and offers Riley $25,000 to gather his friends, return to the school, and record their excursion, he reluctantly agrees. Once inside the crumbling structure, Riley is certain he sees Ethan, and when filming equipment malfunctions, Colton goes missing, the car is destroyed, and their cellphones stop working, the teens, skeptic Jordan, and her crew panic. Kemp employs a dual timeline, alternating between flashbacks that slowly reveal what happened during Riley’s first visit and building hair-raising tension in the present-day via the group’s gratifyingly grim uncovering of the school’s history. Fans of supernatural horror driven by self-assured protagonists will enjoy this creepy tale. Most characters read as white; Jordan is described as having dark skin. Ages 13–up. Agent: Madelyn Burt, Stonesong Literary. (July)
Kirkus Reviews
2024-04-20
Ghost hunters seek to solve a decades-old mystery in this compelling horror debut.
Two years ago, the foursome behind the “Ghost Hawks” YouTube channel—Riley Fox, Evelyn Cho, Colton Pierce, and Ethan Hale—spent the night at a Catholic reform school with the goal of finding out what happened to the five students and one priest who mysteriously disappeared from Saint Dominic Savio’s School for Troubled Youths over winter break in 1982. Though four young YouTubers entered the building to investigate that night, only three left. Two years later, the remaining Ghost Hawks are offered a chance to return to Dominic House with Jordan Jones, the woman behind the popular Netflix ghost-hunting series Spirit Seekers, to film their experience. Though Jordan is offering them monetary compensation, 18-year-old Riley’s primary reason for acquiescing is to figure out what happened to their missing friend, his boyfriend, Ethan. The book’s format, which switches between the events of two years ago and the present day, lends an urgency to the story; readers will likely not want to put it down. Its plot-driven nature, though, leaves little room for character development, other than that of bad boy Colton, who’s been ostracized for selling out his friends to the tabloids. Most characters read white; Evelyn’s name signals Korean heritage, and Jordan is cued Black.
A genuinely creepy ghost story that delves into religious trauma. (Horror. 14-18)
