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A review by noellesmagicallibrary
Nightmare in the Backyard by Jeff Strand
5.0
Well that was fun!
These characters are fully formed and realistic. They felt like real kids experiencing an exciting and terrifying backyard camping trip.
The creature is equal parts silly and cool and I liked the explanation in the end. There’s also a nice lesson about controlling fear.
For a kid, this story is probably actually scary. It’s definitely a great introduction to horror for younger readers.
Chloe and her bff Avery are getting ready to have the best camp out in the backyard. But at the last minute Chloe’s cousin Madison joins in. She doesn’t really fit in with the group but they make the best of it. As the girls are getting ready to sleep they feel something moving under the tent. It feels like a snake slithering around. If that wasn’t scary enough, when they look out the tent flap, there are giant purple tentacles with thorns thrashing around.
The rest of the summary contains spoilers
No one can hear them scream and all of their cell phones have dead batteries. The tentacles are multiplying in number and they mean business dragging the kids around the yard.
They make it to a tree house to hid out and formulate some new plans. The neighbor kid has joined them now too. He came over to the yard to play a prank on them but got sucked up into the nightmare.
Unless you’re standing in the yard, you can’t see what’s going on; everything looks completely normal. So the grown ups don’t notice anything’s wrong until it’s too late. Aunt Cindy is sucked into the ground by a tentacle and once Avery escapes to the next yard she immediately loses her memory.
More people are sucked into the earth. They finally have a solid plan to defeat the creature. But they all end up underground at some point and lo and behold, Chloe’s dad is there! He’s been missing for the past year.
He admits to the group that he never worked in marketing. He’s actually a scientist studying strange alien monsters and this creature was his project. It thrives off of fear so they all have to calm their nerves to defeat. Which they do.
These characters are fully formed and realistic. They felt like real kids experiencing an exciting and terrifying backyard camping trip.
The creature is equal parts silly and cool and I liked the explanation in the end. There’s also a nice lesson about controlling fear.
For a kid, this story is probably actually scary. It’s definitely a great introduction to horror for younger readers.
Chloe and her bff Avery are getting ready to have the best camp out in the backyard. But at the last minute Chloe’s cousin Madison joins in. She doesn’t really fit in with the group but they make the best of it. As the girls are getting ready to sleep they feel something moving under the tent. It feels like a snake slithering around. If that wasn’t scary enough, when they look out the tent flap, there are giant purple tentacles with thorns thrashing around.
The rest of the summary contains spoilers
They make it to a tree house to hid out and formulate some new plans. The neighbor kid has joined them now too. He came over to the yard to play a prank on them but got sucked up into the nightmare.
Unless you’re standing in the yard, you can’t see what’s going on; everything looks completely normal. So the grown ups don’t notice anything’s wrong until it’s too late. Aunt Cindy is sucked into the ground by a tentacle and once Avery escapes to the next yard she immediately loses her memory.
More people are sucked into the earth. They finally have a solid plan to defeat the creature. But they all end up underground at some point and lo and behold, Chloe’s dad is there! He’s been missing for the past year.
He admits to the group that he never worked in marketing. He’s actually a scientist studying strange alien monsters and this creature was his project. It thrives off of fear so they all have to calm their nerves to defeat. Which they do.