Title: The Boo Hag Flex
Author: Justina Ireland
Genre: horror
Similar books: The Cursed Moon by Angela Cervantes
1, 2, 3, Scream by R.U. Ginns
Rating:
Summary (provided by publisher): The last thing Tasha Washington wants is to move from her home in Savannah to a trailer park in Middle-of-Nowhere, Georgia. But when her mother dies and Tasha is taken in by her father—a man she’s never met, who abandoned her mom when Tasha was just a baby—she doesn’t have much of a choice. At least, she thinks, she won’t have to spend much time with him—something that becomes clear when he dumps Tasha with her grandmother and disappears to be with his new girlfriend.
The Shady Pines trailer park seems like a miserable place to spend a summer, even before an elderly neighbor suddenly passes away. But then Tasha meets a girl named Ellie who says she knows what really killed old Mr. Harold: a terrifying creature that stalks the trailer park at night, sucking the life from its victims. Tasha doesn’t believe it, but when she discovers a book of hoodoo legends in her grandmother’s trailer, and more people around Shady Pines start to appear unwell, she begins to fear the stories are true—and that danger is much closer than she thinks.
My opinion: I don't know about you, but I was definitely a middle grade reader who liked a good scare. An avid reader of Goosebumps. So this book would have been exactly my cup of tea. And it's tonally just about perfect. The new-kid dynamic is frequently used in horror as a way for characters to explain away strange happenings but it works quite well in this instance, partly because Tasha is a well developed character. Also in the book's favor is the use of a lesser known spook - the boo hag. The result is creepy, sympathetic, and just a touch gross. While the series construction of tales told in some kind of haunted, otherworldly camp cabin feels a bit forced, the internal story is strong and worth reading on it's own merit.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley
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