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Month in review

Reviews
Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol
The Care and Feeding of Books Old and New by Margot Rosenberg
The Case of the Vanishing Honeybees by Sandra Marble
The Dancing Floor by Barbara Michaels
The Dead in their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley
Don't Push the Button! by Bill Cotter
Everlasting by Angie Frazier
Floors by Patrick Carman
Ghouls Just Haunt to Have Fun by Victoria Laurie
The Haunted Mask by R.L. Stine
I Could Pee on This by Francesco Marciuliano
Innocence by Jane Mendelsohn
The Lost Children by Carolyn Cohagan
Making Money by Terry Pratchett
The Mummy's Mother by Tony Johnston
My Favorite Band Does Not Exist by Robert T. Jeschonek
Nine Lives Last Forever by Rebecca M. Hale
Poetics Of Cinema by David Bordwell
The Pricker Boy by Reade Scott Whinnem
Reunification: A Monterey Mary Returns to Berlin by T.H.E. Hill
Shattered Silk by Barbara Michaels
The Solar System Through Infographics by Nadia Higgins
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
Thud by Terry Pratchett
Timeless by Gail Carriger
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
Turn Left at the Cow by Lisa Bullard
Voltron Force Volume 2: Tournament of Lions by Brian Smith
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Wacky Wednesday by Theo LeSieg

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Comments for The Pricker Boy

The Pricker Boy: 04/26/14

cover art

The Pricker Boy by Reade Scott Whinnem takes place in the forest surrounding a rural town that is mostly a summer home destination. Stucks Cumberland and his friends, are year-rounders. They have to live with the forest even when its at its most sinister.

There's a local legend about a creature with gray skin who is the ghost of a boy left to die in a trap. Children leave offerings to him to throw him off the scent. When Stucks and his friends find one of these shrines, strange things begin to happen.

The Pricker Boy's pacing is similar to Lord of the Flies and the anger expressed by Pete (Stuck's best friend) gives the book a similar savagery. But the pacing of events and the slight of hand used to obfuscate the flashbacks ruined the horror elements for me. Too much of the plot rests on the shoulders of an unreliable narrator — one of my least favorite plot devices.

Two stars

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