MIDDLE GRADE SPECULATIVE (Fantasy) FICTION : Hide and Seeker by Daka Hermon
ABOUT THE BOOK
One of our most iconic childhood games receives a creepy twist as it becomes the gateway to a nightmare world.
I went up the hill, the hill was muddy, stomped my toe and made it bloody, should I wash it?
Justin knows that something is wrong with his best friend. Zee went missing for a year. And when he came back, he was . . . different. Nobody knows what happened to him. At Zee's welcome home party, Justin and the neighborhood crew play Hide and Seek. But it goes wrong. Very wrong.
One by one, everyone who plays the game disappears, pulled into a world of nightmares come to life. Justin and his friends realize this horrible place is where Zee had been trapped. All they can do now is hide from the Seeker.
I went up the hill, the hill was muddy, stomped my toe and made it bloody, should I wash it?
Justin knows that something is wrong with his best friend. Zee went missing for a year. And when he came back, he was . . . different. Nobody knows what happened to him. At Zee's welcome home party, Justin and the neighborhood crew play Hide and Seek. But it goes wrong. Very wrong.
One by one, everyone who plays the game disappears, pulled into a world of nightmares come to life. Justin and his friends realize this horrible place is where Zee had been trapped. All they can do now is hide from the Seeker.
REVIEW
This book sucked me in from the very first page. From the moment Justin and his friends meet to welcome Zee home, things go wrong. Zee has been missing for a year, and while he has returned home, he clearly isn't okay. In fact, he's behaving very erratically and throwing very strange warnings around that don't seem to make any sense. After a spontaneous game of Hide and Seek gets interrupted by everyone breaking the rules, Zee's welcome home party falls apart and the kids leave wondering if Zee will ever again be the friend they knew. The next day, Justin discovers that one of the kids at the party has disappeared. After meeting up with his friends, he learns that he and his friends are next. If they don't find a way to deal with the monster hunting them, they may never return.
Hermon does a fabulous job of creating tension and raising lots of questions from the very first chapter. You wonder immediately what happened to Zee that his friends are nervous to see him. And then Zee's behavior indicates that things are very wrong. Justin works well as a narrator since he's a sympathetic character having just lost his mother shortly after Zee's disappearance, and his ongoing struggles with PTSD are clear. It's also clear that his friends depend on him a great deal as well, something he struggles to live up to. The way the characters come together to face the monster and the almost impossible circumstances makes for a great read. A compelling, creepy read for young readers who like scary reads.
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