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j__tram's review
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
As a fan of Night Vale, I had a blast reading this. Joseph Fink’s prose style is unmatched. Though categorized as a middle grade novel, I found a lot in it to love as an adult, especially around grappling with the passage of time and moving into the unknown territory of the future. The spooky imagery added to the experience. A sweet, weird (in a good way), funny tale.
rachel_cannot's review
adventurous
funny
hopeful
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
kranna's review
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
smalltownbookmom's review against another edition
4.0
A fun middle grade spooky season read featuring a girl who absolutely LOVES Halloween but who gets trapped in an alternate time loop universe on one extra creepy Halloween night. This one gave me a LOT of The witches by Roald Dahl vibes. Super fun, especially to get readers really feeling the season! Great on audio too.
florian_'s review
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
bmg20's review
3.0
Thoughts: The Halloween Queen has frozen time in Esther’s small town and it’s up to her and a few friends to break the curse. The premise of this was really creepy and perfect for Goosebumps fans, young and old alike, but Fink tried to do a little too much within these pages. I appreciated the thought he put into the diversity of the characters and the progress of Esther’s coming-of-age story, however, it definitely detracted from reaching peak horror. Being chased through town by a guy throwing razor blade-filled apples was quite creepy but there was so much other stuff going on it was hard to determine whether or not there was actually any threat.
Verdict: I’m not actually sure if this would have just been better suited to the targeted age group, but either way, it was still a thrilling little Halloween in July sort of tale.
In a nutshell, GIF style:
I received this book free from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Verdict: I’m not actually sure if this would have just been better suited to the targeted age group, but either way, it was still a thrilling little Halloween in July sort of tale.
In a nutshell, GIF style:
I received this book free from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
chamomiledaydreams's review against another edition
3.0
There are some aspects of this book that I really like and other aspects that make me feel a bit conflicted and dissatisfied. To start with the things I like: 1) the enemies to friends trajectory of Ester and Sasha. I love how Sasha is written as a sympathetic bully, someone who is lashing out because she's been treated terribly in the past and wants to assert her dominance by attacking other vulnerable kids. It's sick and twisted, of course, but it's also a realistic portrayal of bullying and the cycle of abuse, and it's heartwarming to see it overcome across the span of the novel. Near the end of the book, Sasha laments that she will be the third wheel in the friend group composed of herself, Ester, and Augustine; but I like Sasha so much that she is at the top of the hierarchy, not the bottom.
2) Ester's obsession with Halloween. I like how her love of trick-or-treating is described, as driven by the glory of Halloween more than the allure of eating candy afterwards. I also love her dedication to creating costumes and how her dream costumes all make her appear inhuman. The narration will say things like, "This was Ester's best costume yet! She was twelve feet tall with a gaping hole where her face should have been," and this elates rather than terrifies her. Good for her, and I would love to check beck in on where her gender takes her in five years or so; my money would be on her feeling some shade of nonbinary or genderqueer.
3) the moral that life is change, and things only stay the same when they've ceased to exist entirely. The sequence where Ester breaks out of the dream and sees one of her potential lives spreading out before her gave me goosebumps. This is an important message to learn, and it reminds me of Octavia Butler's Earthseed novels, where the protagonist founds a religion based upon the only constant being change.
However, this leads me into my biggest reservation about "The Halloween Moon." I like the message of change being a natural part of life, no matter how scary and intimidating it can seem—fear of the unknown and all that. But I dislike how it was set up and introduced through Ester's love of trick-or-treating.
I think it was unfair of her parents to spring the news on her that she wouldn't be trick-or-treating that year mere days before Halloween, after she'd already constructed the majority of her costumes. You can argue that most people grow out of it eventually, but I believe that it's best to let the child make the decision of "when" for themself, and if their parents insist on putting a foot down, they should make their intentions clear in advance, by telling the child, "This will be your last year trick-or-treating," rather than retroactively saying, "Last year was your final time trick-or-treating." Perhaps the point was to exemplify how change is often outside of our control, and we only realize that something was the last time in retrospect. But that is true of people dying, moving away, and having sudden accidents, not a decision that is completely within your control, like going trick-or-treating or planning a solo activity for a holiday.
I also dislike the idea of growing too old for certain things, because there are plenty of harmless interests and activities that people—especially teenagers—feel pressured to deny themselves, like sleeping with stuffed animals and indulging "childish" hobbies like watching cartoons and collecting stickers. When it comes to trick-or-treating specifically, Ester is putting her whole soul into dressing up, and what sort of adult would turn down a middle schooler at their door because they look a certain age that the adult believes is incompatible with trick-or-treating? That's just cruel, and it's the adult's problem, not Ester's. Sure, she should be aware that people aren't expected to trick-or-treat their entire lives, but why would her parents work to instill an insecurity in Ester that she doesn't have already? Let her enjoy things during her childhood, and allow her the agency of choosing when it's time to stop for herself!
There is also an insinuation at one point that high schoolers don't go trick-or-treating; they go out partying and drinking for Halloween. Augustine is fascinated by this and says that he's intrigued by "what comes next," graduating from candy to alcohol. It hurt me a little to hear this, as someone who felt alienated from Halloween in college and high school, because I didn't like the partying scene, and that seemed to have become the only way to celebrate the holiday for people my age.
I'm glad that Ester found a different path forward by the novel's end, showing interest in helping to decorate her neighbor's house for the holiday. But the point remains that I don't think the "life is change" theme was executed very well at every step of the way. Some sections made me want to weep with how well-written the prose was; other sections made me bristle, because it was the same mainstream rhetoric that I'd been hearing my entire life. You don't HAVE to outgrow your love of Halloween, or candy, or costumes, or spooky movies, and you're no less of an adult for your interests, no matter how childish others might consider them. Ester is traumatized by the novel's end and moves on from her love of Halloween, which is understandable. But I wish that she had come to that decision less painfully and with more active choice in the matter.
I wasn't crazy about Ester and Augistine's romance subplot either, but I will allow it, because I recognize that it fits into the theme of change not always being bad. And I do appreciate how it's never stated that they are becoming "more than friends" or any other amatonormative statements like that. They are not becoming "better" or "more" than what they were; they are simply becoming something "else," and that is refreshing to hear. If there must be romance in the book that I'm reading, then I'm glad it's portrayed like this.
My last pet peeve is the unresolved identity of Ester's neighbor, the one who is associated with salt water and is often seen washing his car and watering down his driveway on blisteringly hot days. I was waiting for the dramatic reveal and was very disappointed when, in the last chapter, Ester thinks to herself that she's better off not knowing. I wonder why he played such a mysterious role in the book, if his plotline was just going to be dropped like that. Is his identity supposed to be obvious, and are we as readers supposed to intuit it for ourselves? I would love to know the answer, if anyone else has it.
Nonetheless, this is a fun book to read in October, and I'd highly recommend the audiobook, which is narrated by Kevin R. Free, whom "Welcome to Night Vale" fans might recognize as (predictably) Kevin from Desert Bluffs. I didn't recognize him at first, until he switched to a character whose voice is very similar to Kevin's, and then I was surprised that I hadn't made the connection sooner. His performance is fantastic, and all of his character voices are distinctive and unique.
2) Ester's obsession with Halloween. I like how her love of trick-or-treating is described, as driven by the glory of Halloween more than the allure of eating candy afterwards. I also love her dedication to creating costumes and how her dream costumes all make her appear inhuman. The narration will say things like, "This was Ester's best costume yet! She was twelve feet tall with a gaping hole where her face should have been," and this elates rather than terrifies her. Good for her, and I would love to check beck in on where her gender takes her in five years or so; my money would be on her feeling some shade of nonbinary or genderqueer.
3) the moral that life is change, and things only stay the same when they've ceased to exist entirely. The sequence where Ester breaks out of the dream and sees one of her potential lives spreading out before her gave me goosebumps. This is an important message to learn, and it reminds me of Octavia Butler's Earthseed novels, where the protagonist founds a religion based upon the only constant being change.
However, this leads me into my biggest reservation about "The Halloween Moon." I like the message of change being a natural part of life, no matter how scary and intimidating it can seem—fear of the unknown and all that. But I dislike how it was set up and introduced through Ester's love of trick-or-treating.
I think it was unfair of her parents to spring the news on her that she wouldn't be trick-or-treating that year mere days before Halloween, after she'd already constructed the majority of her costumes. You can argue that most people grow out of it eventually, but I believe that it's best to let the child make the decision of "when" for themself, and if their parents insist on putting a foot down, they should make their intentions clear in advance, by telling the child, "This will be your last year trick-or-treating," rather than retroactively saying, "Last year was your final time trick-or-treating." Perhaps the point was to exemplify how change is often outside of our control, and we only realize that something was the last time in retrospect. But that is true of people dying, moving away, and having sudden accidents, not a decision that is completely within your control, like going trick-or-treating or planning a solo activity for a holiday.
I also dislike the idea of growing too old for certain things, because there are plenty of harmless interests and activities that people—especially teenagers—feel pressured to deny themselves, like sleeping with stuffed animals and indulging "childish" hobbies like watching cartoons and collecting stickers. When it comes to trick-or-treating specifically, Ester is putting her whole soul into dressing up, and what sort of adult would turn down a middle schooler at their door because they look a certain age that the adult believes is incompatible with trick-or-treating? That's just cruel, and it's the adult's problem, not Ester's. Sure, she should be aware that people aren't expected to trick-or-treat their entire lives, but why would her parents work to instill an insecurity in Ester that she doesn't have already? Let her enjoy things during her childhood, and allow her the agency of choosing when it's time to stop for herself!
There is also an insinuation at one point that high schoolers don't go trick-or-treating; they go out partying and drinking for Halloween. Augustine is fascinated by this and says that he's intrigued by "what comes next," graduating from candy to alcohol. It hurt me a little to hear this, as someone who felt alienated from Halloween in college and high school, because I didn't like the partying scene, and that seemed to have become the only way to celebrate the holiday for people my age.
I'm glad that Ester found a different path forward by the novel's end, showing interest in helping to decorate her neighbor's house for the holiday. But the point remains that I don't think the "life is change" theme was executed very well at every step of the way. Some sections made me want to weep with how well-written the prose was; other sections made me bristle, because it was the same mainstream rhetoric that I'd been hearing my entire life. You don't HAVE to outgrow your love of Halloween, or candy, or costumes, or spooky movies, and you're no less of an adult for your interests, no matter how childish others might consider them. Ester is traumatized by the novel's end and moves on from her love of Halloween, which is understandable. But I wish that she had come to that decision less painfully and with more active choice in the matter.
I wasn't crazy about Ester and Augistine's romance subplot either, but I will allow it, because I recognize that it fits into the theme of change not always being bad. And I do appreciate how it's never stated that they are becoming "more than friends" or any other amatonormative statements like that. They are not becoming "better" or "more" than what they were; they are simply becoming something "else," and that is refreshing to hear. If there must be romance in the book that I'm reading, then I'm glad it's portrayed like this.
My last pet peeve is the unresolved identity of Ester's neighbor, the one who is associated with salt water and is often seen washing his car and watering down his driveway on blisteringly hot days. I was waiting for the dramatic reveal and was very disappointed when, in the last chapter, Ester thinks to herself that she's better off not knowing. I wonder why he played such a mysterious role in the book, if his plotline was just going to be dropped like that. Is his identity supposed to be obvious, and are we as readers supposed to intuit it for ourselves? I would love to know the answer, if anyone else has it.
Nonetheless, this is a fun book to read in October, and I'd highly recommend the audiobook, which is narrated by Kevin R. Free, whom "Welcome to Night Vale" fans might recognize as (predictably) Kevin from Desert Bluffs. I didn't recognize him at first, until he switched to a character whose voice is very similar to Kevin's, and then I was surprised that I hadn't made the connection sooner. His performance is fantastic, and all of his character voices are distinctive and unique.