Scooby-Doo meets The Haunting of Hill House. At least, that’s how I’d describe the novel Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero. Apparently, it’s described as a horror-comedy novel, which feels accurate.
In it, we meet the Blyton Summer Detective Club — a group of preteens who solved crimes and unmasked hauntings on their summer vacation — thirteen years after their last case. The last case that they solved on paper in 1977, but has been haunting them ever since. What if it wasn’t a man in a mask this time? The now adults reunite in 1990 to unravel that final mystery.
There’s a dog, a ghost, Scooby-Doo parody galore mixed in with a serious exploration of mental health. It’s a fast-paced, funny book with all the twists and turns you’d want from a mystery and continuously raising stakes. Bonus points for some queer representation.
It gets very Lovecraftian. This is admittedly something the person who recommended it to me told me but I had to google since I’ve never read any H.P. Lovecraft. (The google result: “a subgenre of horror fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock.”
I’ve been staying on theme this month reading and watching more horror-adjacent content and this is a book I’d definitely recommend.
With Love,
Natalie