This book is about 14 year old Curtis who sees his best friend get kidnapped, knows who did it, but doesn't have the proof.

I have a very soft spot for horror novels with child protagonists. It's interesting to view horror through a young person's eyes because it sets us up for some serious dramatic irony potential. I especially love the nostalgia of childhood from the time before internet too, so I was looking forward to this.

This book isn't what I thought it would be, unfortunately.

What I wanted it to be was Curtis sneaking around and trying to uncover the mystery of what happened to his friend, while getting more than he bargained for. I was looking forward to a climax involving a brilliant rescue mission or uncovering something even more sinister being discovered.

Instead, we got a very stressful story in which we find out what happened to his friend right away and instead of a super empowering coming of age story we get to experience the feeling of absolute helplessness for 90% of the book. I was STRESSED and not in a good way. I bit off all my nails reading this. It was definitely straddling the line in which I didn't know if I was slipping into the extreme horror genre.

The ending was fine, I guess? Nothing about this book made me feel very good though. I may have had too high of expectations.