I can't believe I'm typing this but - the book needed to be longer. This book is a series of events that I really would have cared about if I'd been given time and reason to actually care about the characters. Instead, we have a series of confusing, unrealistic events. I beleive author was going for an "It" -like- feeling of it young teens from the 70s/80s saving the neighborhood against all odds (and adults) but it came off as the creative writing assignment of the main character, Curtis. Not a boring read, but not nearly as good as it could have been. 

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.