Review by Booklist Review
After ditching an assembly to play a spirit-summoning game in the school's attic, seventh-grader Hannah discovers she's been cursed. What's worse, she brought it on herself. A record of her woes through descriptions, drawings, and dialogue, Hannah's spiral notebook journal tells this wickedly funny horror tale. As her miseries mount daily (skinned knees, lost teeth, maybe actual bugs in her brain), Hannah admits she sneakily manipulated the game to scare her friends; now a chatty, snarky evil spirit is threatening her via red-inked notebook entries. Hannah's frantic research about past victims reveals she has just eight days to undo the curse. Critically acclaimed author-illustrator Lai's art is gleefully grisly--Hannah's black-line drawings show characters as creepily skull-faced, with eyes as scribbled black holes over black mouths set with teeth of pointy white pickets. Droplets and smears of red splotched onto the page are persuasively bloody. Both over-the-top silly and genuinely scary, this graphic tale of a curse ending in a classic twist is preternaturally perfect for readers looking to play around with the horror genre.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Seventh grader Hannah Lee finds herself cursed after sneaking out of an assembly to the school's supposedly haunted attic with her friends. Constructed as Hannah's illustrated sketch diary, which is filled with drawings by Lai (Ghost Book) rendered in b&w with blood-red accents, Hannah notes all the strange things that begin happening to her following the game. In biology class, a knife slips out of her hand and lands "smack-dab in the middle of my forehead," while further investigation of an itch in her gums reveals centipedes "scratching my jawbone tingly and torturous." When the sinister force at play starts communicating with her via her journal, Hannah must find a way to expunge the evil presence or face dire consequences. But even as Hannah investigates, the curse taunts her: "You ungrateful brat.... Without the villain, there would be no obstacles, no opportunities for the hero to become a hero." Lai's fast-paced, body-horror-centric tale sets up an accessible and eerie mystery through which the protagonist grapples with spine-tingling terrors, uncovers previously hidden personal potential, and forms stronger connections. Character skin tones reflect the white of the page. Ages 8--12. Agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Aug.)
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Review by Horn Book Review
Though others may call it "an accident...I know the word for someone who goes to science class to dissect earthworms and gets sliced in the forehead by an earthworm-juice-encrusted blade and has to get two stitches: CURSED." Middle-school protagonist Hannah Lee relates in her journal all the things that have gone supernaturally wrong or been left unexplained over the course of eight days when she is "hexed by ancient evil." Her nose keeps bleeding, her front tooth falls out (the dentist finds silverfish in her gums, shudder), her brother falls into a coma. She records each occurrence in her diary...and the malevolent spirit begins to write back. Lai's (Ghost Book, rev. 9/23) visual style -- incorporating copious, plot-furthering illustrations within the main text -- is here displayed on spiral notebook-looking lined pages with spiky, sketchlike art ("by" Hannah), mostly black and white with some splotches of blood red, capturing the increasingly weird, and sometimes genuinely frightening, goings-on. Allusions to the power of storytelling and an impending author's visit are threaded throughout, both used as foreshadowing to an attention-grabbingly eerie ending. Elissa GershowitzSeptember/October 2024 p.78 (c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young girl finds herself plagued by a dark spirit. Seventh grader Hannah Lee and her friends skip an assembly for children's horror author Leon Star and instead go to the school's supposedly haunted attic, where they attempt to contact the spirits. Soon after, Hannah realizes she's unwittingly released an evil curse. Now she must contend with bad luck such as accidentally being skewered by a scalpel during science class. Hannah suspects that Leon Star might know what's happening and seeks help; unfortunately, he tells her she doesn't have much time before she'll succumb to the curse. This inventive tale is presented in journal format as Hannah chronicles her troubles in a mix of doodlelike scrawls and diary entries. Even the pages of her notebook aren't safe from the malevolent spirit, who often interrupts her musings and responds in red ink. Readers will find much to enjoy in this fast-paced but extremely macabre tale. Body horror abounds. The book's pages become spattered with blood as Hannah's teeth fall out; later her dentist tells her that her gums are overrun with silverfish. Characters who initially seem merely unsettling become shockingly sinister-looking at times. Lai plays with the form and function of language, adding action and sound effects and deftly tying narrative and visuals together. In the cartoonish illustrations, characters have skin the white of the page. An ominous yet irresistible story that will delight and distress in equal measure. (Horror. 8-12) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
