Welcome to the Ghost Show

Gr 4-7–Middle schooler Hazel Gold is obsessed with the dead. She hunts for ghosts with best friends Lucien and Theo in their self-proclaimed group, the Creepy Club. Unfortunately, their home of Leonardtown, MD, is frustratingly ghost free—at least until a skull-shaped attraction calling itself the Ghost Show appears at the edge of town. While Hazel is initially convinced that the ghosts inside are fakes, her opinion changes after meeting the proprietor, Everest Nocturama Mancer. Mancer claims that he can resurrect the dead in spirit form, including the victims from a terrible and toxic chemical explosion that happened in the town several years prior. This includes Hazel’s sister Tori, and while there is initial enthusiasm for what Mancer is offering, the danger of this bargain soon threatens to consume the entire town. This novel delights in using blood, slime, and body horror to present a creepy story, but character development and motivations are unfortunately lackluster. There is some diversity in the main cast (Hazel is white, Lucien and Theo are Black), but Hazel is the only one who gets a developed back story and a reason for uncovering Mancer’s scheme. Mancer is pretty transparent about his intentions of amassing power, which undercuts the effectiveness of discoveries made by Hazel and her friends. And defeating Mancer and his ghosts by willingly dousing the town with the same toxic chemical that caused so much misery in Leonardtown’s past is baffling, to say the least.