I received a copy from HarperCollins Children's Books through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Esther Gold’s favorite holiday is Halloween. She lives for it and spends a lot of her free time planning and perfecting the perfect Halloween costume every year. When Esther’s parents tell her that she’s too old to go trick-or-treating, she is devastated. Of course, Esther wouldn’t be Esther without Halloween, so she plans to go trick-or-treating one last time. Armed with her secret costume and her best friend who hates the holiday, they sneak out together only to discover that the entire neighborhood has been put into a supernatural sleep.
I picked up this book because it sounded right up my alley since Halloween is my favorite holiday. We follow Esther Gold as she prepares to sneakily go trick-or-treating one last time. Unfortunately for her, things don’t go as planned because her neighborhood is under a sleeping spell. The only people awake are Esther, her best friend, her longtime school bully, and her dentist neighbor. Together, they try to take on the Queen of Halloween and rescue the neighborhood from sleeping their way through the rest of their lives.
One of the things that I liked about this book is that the characters are surprisingly complex. Esther is worried about growing up and holding onto trick-or-treating as the last piece of being a kid as enters her teenage years. Her best friend, Agustín, is battling with some abandonment issues as his mom spends long hours working with very little time to spend with him. Sasha, Esther’s bully, gets bullied herself and has been taking it out on Esther for years. Mr. Gabler is a former thief turned dentist trying to do good.
I thought the supernatural aspect of it was interesting as well. We’ve got the Queen of Halloween using a rare orange moon to pause time and turn an innocent neighborhood into Halloween forever. There are her cronies driving around town and the kids she collects and their fate with her. Plus, there’s the black cats that are the Queen of Halloween’s sworn enemies. I wish there was more information on the supernatural aspects of the story, but I’m not surprised that this isn’t something that’s further explored since it’s a book written for middle schoolers.
All in all, I enjoyed this story and I think I would’ve enjoyed it a lot if this is something that was published when I was in middle school myself.
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