I’m a power reader who devours a high volume of books every year, BUT a great percentage of said books are selected for me—books for work or because a friend needs someone to talk to about the book in question. When I read a book of my own choosing, just for fun, and obsess over it, I pun that I am being “Shelf-Centered.”
Today I’ve decided to start subjecting more people to sharing my rants on my shelf-centered reads, starting with my latest obsession. Newly released and timed perfectly for the most spooktacular time of the year, we have:
Mystery James Digs Her Own Grave
by Ally Russell
The plot in a nutshell: preteen Mystery (yes, that’s her name; yes, it makes delightful sense when explained) lives and works at a funeral house and cemetery. She’s pretty chill about the morbid (except for her ability to smell ghosts—turns out they stink!) until a grave robbery puts her family home and business in jeopardy, and sets her on a collision course with something monstrous.
This book unabashedly celebrates the spooky, the creepy, that Halloween life, and I am here for it! As soon as I learned the premise/setting, reading it was a no-brainer (sorry hungry zombies). (As a secondary reason, the author Ally Russell is also the author of Bigfoot book It Came from the Trees; she’s talented, witty, and a terror in all of the best ways.)
Now for the fun part—why I liked it so much! The middle grade level for it was a big strength—it means it was fast-paced and fast-to-read, and fun. This book is great for when you want to just throw yourself into a spooky adventure and disconnect from the world for a couple of hours.
As a horror reader, I think some of the best scary stuff comes at the middle-grade level. Adult horror can get really bogged down in pacing (and the slower the pace, the more pressure is put on suspension of disbelief, especially in supernatural horror). It can also fall into a trap that destroys tension in young adult horror: a romantic storyline that pulls too much focus away from the scary. And then once you get to books for younger than middle grade readers, you’ll find the aesthetic is there but the chills, not so much.
What Russell does particularly well here, aside from the pacing and vibes, is using the age of her heroine to undermine Mystery’s credibility with adults, forcing Mystery to handle her own problems. So, we had dual tensions: the paranormal (and implied lethal) dangers of the monster (who really was nosfera-tuns of fun), and the mundane world consequences for if Mystery failed to solve the crime or got caught doing shifty things to stop the villain.
As for Mystery herself, she’s charming, dripping with spookitude, and has enough questions from her own background that the book is worth reading for her character alone. She’s active without being a canned Action Girl, a touch impulsive but in a relatable way, and as curious as a cat.
The story also has its own spin on the supernatural element and rules, like how ghosts smell (and more!). I have to stop here to say how much I LOVE rules as a key component on paranormal horror. I just love rulesets in horror so much. SO, after Mystery figures out the “who” and “why” of the story, she has to tackle the more dangerous “how” (so that she can uno-reverse-card it into “how to stop it”). The rules that the supernatural operate under here are logical and intuitive, but also fresh. (Little sidebar type dealies between chapters occasionally, in Mystery’s hand on notebook, elaborate on relevant factual information, which sets up readers to expect her to navigate paranormal rules well.)
The climax of the story does a really good job ratcheting up the threat level, but no spoilers there!
On the whole, I’d say the book is more spooky than scary. Because I like charts almost as much as I like horror, I made some! First, here we have my placement of this book on axis of threat and supernatural levels:
As you can see, this book is far to the right on the supernatural scale—ghosts and other paranormal standards are very much real in this world. For threat/danger, I place the book on the northern side of the chart. During most of the plot, the book would be closer to the natural-supernatural axis (with the dangers theoretical, what will happen *if* Mystery fails). At the climax, this tips over into imminent threat on her life, but in a non-violent way that won’t disturb sensitive kids.
And that leads to my second chart! This is how I think about horror in general:
So, first we have Creepy. Creepy is the foundation of horror, and is the POTENTIAL.
Once creepy hits supernatural, you get Spooky! Spooky is ghosty vibes, aesthetics, but not so much of a threat. Spooky has a child, Spoopy! Spoopy is what you get when your Spooky is flavored very silly.
Next you have Scary. In scary, you have creepy vibes but not necessarily spooky (since the scares could come from non-paranormal dangers). In scary, the threat level is elevated over spooky, more immediate.
Then, finally, you have confirmed presence of active threat in the twins, horrifying and terrifying. They’re comparable fear levels, but different flavors: horrifying has more shock/revulsion, while terrifying is a straight up dose of fear to your veins.
For Mystery James Digs Her Own Grave, I’d put it in the spooky camp. For younger readers (especially ones not quite convinced that ghosts and monsters aren’t real), it could easily slide into the scary camp. (For Mystery herself, though—she’d probably rate her adventure as terrifying, since she was the one dealing with the deadly danger!)
I’d recommend this book for anyone looking for that spooky, Halloweeny mood—adults looking for a fast, concentrated dose (that’s well-written!), and kids who want safe scary without gore (beyond mentions of dead bodies).
SO, if you’ve read the book and want to talk about it, or talk about books/horror/MG horror in general, you can hit me up on bluesky!
