Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - Meddling Kids

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Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

8 reviews

monarchbooks's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-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? Yes

4.0

I don't know what I was expecting going into this book but it was not what I got. Every page shocked me. A bit wordy and heavy on metaphors. Unexpected queer rep.

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thelittleone's review against another edition

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adventurous dark lighthearted mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Very talented writer, and a great riff on Scooby Doo and Lovecraft with a few unique spins. I probably would have rated this higher if it weren’t for one thing: I cannot stand Andy.

As a take on Scooby Doo, most of the cast stays true to character as darker, more realistic versions of themselves haunted by a harrowing investigation in their teen years. However, the author combines Daphne and Velma into one character, named Kerri, and introduce Andy in Velma’s place.

Andy is introduced in a scene

fighting off multiple grown men twice her size in a bar fight with ease.

She’s capable of about doing anything to save the day,

as she “learned to fight” when training in the military for a year (which she ran away from). Also, she broke out of prison.

Look, I get the book is about Lovecraftian horrors and that requires me to suspend my disbelief a bit, but this gets into the territory of “look at my super cool original character” aka Mary Sue.

Also, there’s a coming of age story here about Andy, who is a non-binary lesbian, falling in love

with her childhood best friend, Kerri.

I am absolutely here for it, and at a high level I love it. There’s moments where it feels like a really candid take on the confusion about navigating the unknown between two young women who care immensely about each other. But, other times it absolutely gives “man writes lesbians” vibes.

When Andy confesses her feelings to Kerri, she tells her that she’s been “fantasizing” about her since she was 13 years old. If a man confessed his feelings to his childhood best friend and said he’s been “fantasizing” about her since he was 13 years old, she would probably be terrified and grossed out. But a woman says it and it’s okay? There’s also a scene where Andy forces a celebratory kiss onto Kerri when Kerri has already told Andy that she doesn’t like women and it just feels like a violation of Kerri’s autonomy.

Also, there’s a graphic scene early on in the book

where Kerri has a nightmare about being violently molested.

It feels really out of place from the rest of the book, and I just can’t help but think that a woman author would never include a scene like that in a book so why does a male author feel the need to do it?

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professor_dinosaur's review against another edition

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adventurous funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

I enjoyed myself, which I think is the single most important element of a book like this. It has a heart, and I think fans of Scooby-Doo who can stomach a lot of cheese will enjoy themselves too.

The biggest nick to my enjoyment was the stiffness of the characters. Though distinct and fun, they struggle to feel round in the way the narrative seems to ask of them, more “caricature” than “character.” I think the source material does a lot of leg work for this book. Without having the background knowledge of the Scooby-Doo cast, much of the characterization is fairly flat (ex. the term “jock” had considerable economy). Many of the interpersonal conflict feels stilted as a result, subservient to the action-plot. The prose can be very clever at times, and then too clever, almost like a charming but metaphor-bloated college essay. Action scenes got increasingly hard to follow, not impossible to understand but maybe too nitty-gritty-detail-heavy.

I know it’s a toss-up, but I found the switch between prose and the “play” style nice. I can see its utility - what would the author really do in between these snappy scenes anyways, write dialogue tags? When it came to the more self-aware parts of this fourth-wall-flirtation, I was skeptical. Especially references to “the camera” and whatnot. Really just felt out of place - there’s no cameras in Scooby-Doo.

Maybe I wasn’t the target demographic, but I felt the Big Bad was trite. The book can’t help this, if you are going to write “Children’s Property Meets Lovecraft,” you need Lovecraft there. It’s difficult to make that fresh, I respect that. The accomplice to the Big Bad, now she was fun (albeit again corny, but who really minds a corny villain?). She did a lot for the story, but she’s not in the story much. Oh, and “le epic twist” regarding her is not very rewarding. In fact, most of the “le epic twists” aren’t. A reader has scant opportunity to suspect that we were even meant to be looking for a deception. Y’know, like clues… like in Scooby-Doo. I found myself saying things more like “okay, sure, that’s plausible” than the much better “ah, I should’ve known!” Is this meant to be in the fashion of actual Scooby-Doo villains? Maybe. That’s where I give those elements a little leniency.

The whole “Scooby-Doo for adults” pitch was dicey with me the second Andy kicked those guys in the nuts. I never felt like the book treated its more serious “adult” themes with disrespect, but there were times (ex. Arkham Asylum, just about anything involving Peter) where the cartoon-ifying of adult (and traumatic) experiences gave me tonal vertigo. Maybe I can compare it to an Adult Swim program. This is where the prose did the book a disservice. It’s a difficult tightrope to walk, when you put “edgy” (read: adult) material into an otherwise playful book it can be hard not to fall back on “edgy” (read: angsty) prose. I think this issue is a symptom of the quirky prose and overwhelming identity of the book (Scooby-Doo x Lovecraft, you won’t forget this for a single page), and not one that spoiled the book for me. For the record, the scene where Andy kicked those guys in the nuts felt sort of like a Reddit comment, if that makes sense.

I feel like Andy uses Reddit. That’s all.

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