Reviews with content warning for Death - Meddling Kids

This is a love letter to all the horror fiction and horror films that came before, mixed with a touch of Scooby-Doo, of course. I must admit that I got drawn in by the Scooby-Doo angle as I am not an avid reader or watcher of the horror genre. However, if you are, I think you’ll love the book even more. It plays with different tropes beautifully, twisting them into something new but still recognizable. The characters are l stereotypes but not the ones you’d expect, and I think this may make it hard for some readers to relate to them. I found them to be fascinating— broken weird misfits with an ennui that all 20-somethings experience. Plus there’s a dog. Cantero’s writing won’t be for everyone— his metaphors are weird, but remarkably apt and razor sharp, and his word choice absurd (I’ve never looked up so many words in a single book) but brilliant. There are parts where you go from narrative to screen play, and even though this initially took me out of the story, I came to appreciate it at the end when the book reached its cinematographic climax. I highly recommend it for a bizarre, trippy horror read. I want a sequel to it!

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kalzeb's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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connorjdaley's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense 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

3.5

My fiancé has always been huge into Scooby-Doo, so I had ordered this for her and she really liked it. This Spooky Season I decided to give it a listen instead of a read, and it was a good one.

For all intents and purposes, this is an adult Scooby-Doo reimagining. There’s some great Easter eggs, references, and alterations. But I particularly liked that the author changed the characterizations of the meddling kids. Although I did find some of it, like the romance aspect, to feel incredibly forced and weird. Still enjoyed the overall changes though.

13 years after the final case for the Blyton Summer Detective Club, Andy decides it’s time to figure out what went wrong and get the band back together. They are all messed up, and at first I just thought it was going to be a dark story about their combined ptsd, but the story really deviated in at least a somewhat satisfying way. What if they weren’t just meddling kids? What if not every crime had a guy in a mask at the end of it? That’s what this story seeks to show.

My only real gripe for this one is that the climax builds and builds and builds, and then I personally felt like it fell flat. It actually comes to a close so suddenly that I thought I missed it and re-listened to a full half an hour…I hadn’t missed it, it’s just in actuality, not really there anyway. Regardless though I did really enjoy the rest of the stuff that goes us there.

Personally a 3.5/5* for me, I wish there had been Scooby snacks…

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wooter42's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny slow-paced

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

2.75

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lovelymisanthrope's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This was such a fun Scooby-Doo esque novel featuring a group of best friends and their dog, solving small town mysteries. "Meddling Kids" picks up fifteen years after the group solved their finally mystery. All of their lives have taken a turn and they are each struggling with their own demons. They decide now is the time to finally venture back to their old stomping ground and revisit the last mystery to finally get to the bottom of what was happening so long ago.
This was a really fun adult-take on the Scooby-Doo story. I loved seeing how all the characters were struggling, but they came together because their friendship was so strong. I also really enjoyed seeing how educated they became, and how their knowledge really expedited solving the strange case they found themselves trapped in. There is a bit of a mystical, horror element to this story, and it really helped the atmosphere of the book feel spooky. Overall, this was a fun read that I definitely recommend you pick up in October!

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sierrafroggy's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

ngl found this super boring and really hard to read. the transphobic comments in the beginning were super unnecessary and made me real uncomfortable

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epeolatri's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

This has very easily become one of my new favorite novels. I loved the author’s writing style and humor. Each character was amazing and fucked up in their own way. Every time I thought I had it figured out something even crazier happened, right up until the last sentence.

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emily_journals's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

The concept of this book really intrigued me. Scooby-Doo with Lovecraftian elements where the monsters might be (and likely are) real? Sign me up!

Except this book was so disappointing in execution. From reading other reviews, I'm so glad I read the audiobook version of this, because the stage direction inserts and made up words weren't as noticeable, so I'll give the narrator mad props for making those things really unnoticeable. I thought the book started off on the right track, but around the halfway point in this book is when I really started noticing all the negatives.

First off, for being set in the 90s (and flashback-esque scenes from the 70s), I personally did not feel much nostalgia around any certain time period. This book could have mostly been reset from the 90s and plopped into modern day (or really, any other time period) with very little change; this is 100% fine, except one of the selling points promised by this book is to be nostalgic for the 90s specifically (which I personally did not find it to be).

Secondly, the ending of this book. Everything that happened in the last ~20% of the book was chaotic, unbelievable, and hard to follow.

People were dying and being resurrected left and right, dogs were getting possessed by demons/angels/random protector beings(still unclear), rituals were being cast, people were living forever; it was all just too much going on and gives the feeling that the author had a bunch of ideas in the draft and didn't edit anything out.

Seriously, so much of the end of this book was just fight scene after fight scene, with little substantial buffer between, which I personally find really boring to read (or listen to) for a significant amount of time, especially when every fight scene is "gang fights creatures, then run, then fight new hoard of same creatures, then run.... repeat".

Lastly, this book has some dangerous discussion of mental health and some questionable representation of queer people. The mental health discussion in this book is unnuanced and the whole introduction scene to the asylum has some problematic descriptions of people with and without mental health issues. The main villain ended up using transness as a device to live forever and be evil, which was super unnecessary. The lesbian character in this book is also very much a caricature of a "typical lesbian" media portrayal.

Overall, I wish I had done more research into this book before picking it up instead of taking the promises given by the author/publisher at face value.

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