Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - Meddling Kids

While it speeds up almost too much in its final act, Meddling Kids is a fascinating look into what happens when our YA heroes grow up without sacrificing what makes stories like them interesting in the first place.

Content Warnings

disnelyse's review against another edition

Go to review page

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? It's complicated

5.0

It gives such Scooby Doo meets Stephen King's IT vibes and I love it

Content Warnings

courtwj's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

3.25

Interesting premise and mythology but terrible LGBTQIA+ rep and distracting writing style at times.

Content Warnings

matcha_cat's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark funny medium-paced

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

2.0

Content Warnings

heathengray's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark funny lighthearted 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

3.5

About 3/4 into this book, I was prepared to give it 4.5/5 or higher. I was thoroughly enjoying its pace, characters, and (lazy attempts to use present tense movie script style dialogue to convey immediacy aside) the writing style. Here you have a legitimate attempt to bring Scooby-Do into the modern era, almost blending it with the plot of Stephen King's It, and then it just stopped being as fun any more.

While being a little silly in homage to its Hanna Barbera roots, the book does attempt some realism, grounding the crew of the Mystery Machine in the real world. For example, one character cannot fly in a plane because they escaped jail, and airports use federal databases, but later the cops take the not-so-teenage detectives at their word with little evidence when

evacuating two towns and a city may be required

. The realism definitely takes a nose dive towards the end, and it does not help with the tension. Also, while written in a modern, quippy way, I felt the book took too many liberties with it's nods to the fourth wall, assuming I knew all the references it threw at me. I knew enough of them to know that some could be quite anachronistic for a person in 1990 to reference, thereby dating the book even more, and anchoring it to references of the 2000s.

Otherwise I found the main characters a delight to be around, if a bit too Mary Sue, none of them excelling in life after their days of teenage adventure, but all of them well equipped to handle obstacles thrown at them. The antagonist disappointingly lacked any real motivation.

You may see other reviewers tag this book with

transphobia, but without spoiling it, it isn't done with malice, nor does the author dead name or anything - that person is that person as they are in the current narrative of the book, and they have a compelling reason for being trans, though they probably wouldn't agree with the nomenclature

Content Warnings

_readerfromtheblacklagoon_'s review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious tense 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

3.5

Content Warnings

brichneyfloss's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark funny mysterious medium-paced

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

3.0

Content Warnings

yoursam's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous fast-paced

2.5

"It was," he said. "Kerri, all we do is try to cope."

^ the only quote that i liked enough to jot down

an unfortunate let down. the amount of potential here was off the charts but it simply didn't deliver, and cantero's writing style certainly didn't help. the introductory chapters at the start had a very "a man wrote this" vibe that was hard to ignore, but we can close an eye to that, sort of.

the real problem here is the actual writing - cantero goes for something fast and quirky that works out maybe a handful of times in the whole novel. the paragraph to "script-style" back to paragraph certainly tries to do something but falls flat constantly, because there's simply no need for it. particular dialogue tags are favored over a simple "said" often enough that you can't not notice ("polled" comes to mind, for example). but above all is the similes. it is a ever constant waterfall of it, every other sentence if not every sentence. let your story breathe, man! everything is like something else, usually something Quirky or edgy or whatever the fuck. here's one of my own, it felt like being in a car with a kid who has yet to figure out the clutch. don't even get me started on the hair thing, i wanted to kill myself.

i didn't hate this novel but unfortunately the amount of stuff that i didn't enjoy far surpasses the things i did (namely the concept, the potential, the characters more or less).

there are missed opportunities everywhere here, mostly with nate and especially with peter and his situation (when i realized what i thought would happen didn't i sighed loud enough my mom asked me what was up lmao). there's loose ends and dropped foreshadowing, which i suppose makes it.... not... foreshadowing lmao and that's the part that infuriates me the most. i hate a book that disappoints.

nail in the coffin is 1) the

vaguely transphobic villain-coding (or is it trans-coded villain?) oh you get what i mean

at least to me. 2) i'm not native american but the whole thing with copperseed being there for exposition AND even worse that ending?? something there rubbed me the wrong way and i don't have to spell out what it was because it should be obvious. also, 3) again this might not be my place but andy's character seems to lean a bit too much into the angry, aggressive latina stereotype, especially at the beginning.

solid bones, really interesting dynamics between the gang, amazing concept and even better set up for the starting point. this story could have been great, all it needed was for someone else to be holding the pen.

i promise i'm not a hater lmao

Content Warnings

More...