Written by Curtis Jobling
An Adventure Book Review by Erin the Literary Cat©, International Book Reviewer.
Hello, and welcome to my latest Book Review featuring this week a Adventure in Middle Grade Fiction.
Without further ado, and with my trusty housekeeper, Mrs H, nailing some horseshoes and garlic around the house, lets get on with this fantastic and eerie tale.
AUTHOR: Curtis Jobling. Click here for their web page.
Illustrations by: Alice Cao. Click here for their web page.
Published by: Fox & Ink Books. Click here for their web page.
Publication date Paperback: 2/10/2025
Paperback 13 digit ISBN: 978-1916747692
UK Cover price for Paperback: £8.99
Amazon KINDLE price: £4.99
Pages: 371
Age range: 11-14 and upwards
Any dogs or cats? two dogs and something nasty in the woods
SPOILER ALERT
Some as to plot direction and characters.
Thank you to...
We are exceedingly grateful to Graeme Williams and Fox & Ink Publishers for offering us a chance to Read & Review an advance copy of this story.
As ever, our views are our own, and we only share reviews of books we have bought or received in exchange for an impartial review.
First and foremost, the books we review are those we select to read, like, and feel our global readers deserve to know about and will enjoy.
The plot
The dramatic prologue sees Sam Harper, father to Kiki, our protagonist, rescue a woman from an oncoming logging lorry. In the dark, stark naked in the snow and confused, there is no way the woman we get to know as Fay, can save herself. Sam pulls her to safety, and so creates an underlying plot for the story.
Some months later, Kiki Harper, sixteen, awakens from a nightmare just as her train pulls into the sleepy and remote seaside town of Merryweather-by-the-sea. She was at school for three months on the UK mainland, and is now returning home for Christmas. She has returned early to catch the big switch-on of the Christmas lights and to surprise her family. After certain events the previous summer, all eyes are on the supposed destructive and troubled child. Troubled, but not without cause, as the recurring nightmare is of the night not that long ago when her mother was killed in a car crash that saw Kiki and her younger siblings pulled from the car submerged in the river.
Her best friend, Stefan Pimblott – a young poacher, and son of a local scrap metal merchant – doesn’t materialise to take her home, so she heads off in the snow. Along the way we readers get introduced to certain key characters, including Stefan’s elder sister, Ruby, her loutish bigot of a boyfriend Leo Pitts, aka Pitbull, and police officer Maggie O’Malley.
On arriving home, she discovers a woman, Fay, in the house. She is wearing her mother’s clothes and working away in the kitchen. Kiki is pulled up short, not knowing what to make of the situation as her father has not told her of a mother replacement in his life. Her father and younger siblings are besotted with this lady, who is nothing but polite and well intentioned. Even the townsfolk have taken to her, and it seems memories of her mother have been swept aside by some magical spell.
We get a feeling of something strange going on in the village when the schoolmistress notices how quiet and tired her class is, and also when more and more of the young children aren’t attending due to some mysterious malaise. Whatever it is, it’s putting a dampener on the entire village and Christmas; all save the Harper family and recent incomers. The children have been drawing a stick man, the Stick Man of fable, more of a tree than a man, and singing a very spooky and about him in the playground. Of course, the old schoolmistress has seen it all before, many years past. At that time, the same drawings were made and songs sung. Then something came from the woods and took one of their number away. That was the orice demanded then, and it seems now also. The past is being replayed.
When Wem Campbell, from the lighthouse, (thought to be suffering the ravages of dementia) rips the priest’s festive lights off an ancient stone cross, swearing that it‘s all wrong and they will awaken ‘HIM’, we get a real sense of the pervading menace, mystery, history, and malice that lurks in the towns past. Of course, it’s already too late. Only the surviving senior townsfolk know what really happened, and they are, for the time being at least, not telling.
Woven through this tale like a vein of rot in a potato, we have onetime criminal, poacher turned gamekeeper for the logging Blackwood family’s estate, Mick Cleaver, who lives in the Wyrdwood. He lives near the now-dilapidated old Blackwood family mansion. What he is up to isn’t known, but he doesn’t like trespassers and has made it clear he wants Stephan’s family out of his hair once and for all. This spills out along the plot in various confrontations. He isn’t afraid to kill or maim to get what he wants or to keep his secrets safe.
As the festive snow starts to gather deeply all around, so we get to see more of the stick man. And with him come the nasty things, drawing in the good and the bad, the innocent, ugly and unlucky.
To lay out more of the nuances and characters will be almost impossible, save that the threads knit together dramatically, and in their own right, to become something both grand and terrible. And I don’t mean that awful festive sweater you may have been given one year that lurks almost menacingly at the back of the wardrobe . . .
So, what did we think?
As a rule, we don’t like and review horror books. But this hooked our attention when we were offered it, and we found we could not refuse. That says a lot in my book.
You really would have to go a long way to better this tale. Come the closing chapters, we could visualise this as a Steven Spielberg movie. And we shouldn’t be surprised by that, given the author’s pedigree.
Before coming to writing books, Curtis Jobling was the designer for ‘Bob the Builder’ and worked on ‘Wallace & Gromit‘ and ‘Mars Attacks‘. He has written horror stories for some time for older audiences. His million-selling ‘Wereworld’ series of adventures has become a major new animated production called ‘Wolf King‘ on Netflix.
This adventure has a wealth of family and small-town community charm, but also highlights family and community issues. The cast has everyone from the elderly, one-time schoolteacher next door, to the young, eager priest ignorant of past ways and rites. There’s the local police officer, born and bred on the island, who has fallen in love with the new schoolteacher. The local logging company is felling the ancient wood for profit, and the Mayor’s son is a lout and bully and ripe for putting in his place – but nobody dares. Then there’s the mysterious, youthful, quiet fisherman who lives with the aged Wem in the nearby lighthouse. They all have secrets, some unknown to them.
The villain – well, the corporeal one, if you get my drift – he reminds us of Bill Sykes, complete with his dog. He really is as evil as they come, and delightfully, every inch of his bad nature has been brought to the fore.
And best of all, possibly beyond our protagonist, is Fay. A clear instigator of things at the start, but is she a key player in this story? Is she who she seems to be, and are her motives and reasons for being there as pure as they seem? Things are never simple in this tale.
From the isolated setting, trapped between the ocean and the Wyrdwoods – which creates a locked-room mystery effect – we are forced to focus in on the story and characters hemmed within. Histories, both old and recent, of place and people intrigue and frighten beyond the page and window.
We loved the way the plot unfolded. It didn’t just throw clues at you as we wanted/expected them but held back till the optimal point for the characters and story. As a result, you were never 100% certain of anyone, well, nearly everyone. The characters evolved well in our mind’s eye, and whilst some are as painted, others had hidden depths.
As for the ending, well, that was almost cinematographic and brings us squarely back to the Spielberg fan in us, but I’ll not give it away. Oh, one more thing: the epilogue is, in a comeuppance way, oh-so-sweet . . .
So, crunch time.
The story is a clever, vivid, articulate and atmospheric blend of folklore and mild horror, set in a small town steeped in secrets. As capable a story for a teen as any of the Stephen King books for adults Mrs H has read in days gone by. Yes, there are grizzly bits, but they are in keeping, well placed and not for shock value.
In fact, it complements and introduces the author’s other fantasy books for older readers. We thoroughly recommend this adventure for teenagers and up, to those who don’t mind ‘branching’ out into a little fright and a few grizzly pieces too, none of which we thought were OTT for the story.
And now for something not spooky at all, the Sunday Selfies!
Here is yours truly testing out the guest room bed. It's been a while since we had a visitor, mainly because they miss the turn off for the County of East Lambtonshire!
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that adventure review, and will dip your toes into the amazing world of middle grade and teen literature. Whilst some can be quite short others, like this one, are pretty long.
What books have you all been reading, and would you recommend them to your blogging friends and the wider world?
Till laters!
ERin
