Don't...ever...fall asleep.

So I've slipped again, after catching up with 5 out of the 7 books I needed to read and having read a 6th, I was on a proper roll.

But then came the return to a ludicrous pace in work and with that, a blog post that never happened, until now. 

With Halloween fast approaching and the leaves on the trees morphing through their colours as they slowly wither and die this seems the perfect time for a return to something scary. 

I happened across this as a suggested read from my local online library and with a tag line like that I was thrown back into the days of my adolescence, where nursery rhymes were sung in horror movies for dramatic effect.

The plot is about a group of kids on a school residential in a place called Crater Lake, so named because a body of water had built up inside of an impact crater. Once there things start to happen, horrible, terrible things that defy explanation.

Our main protagonist must lead a small group of survivors to a possible means of escape before confronting the nightmare that has taken over the lake. But not before the group make some unsettling discoveries about themselves and each other.

The writing feels very basic, as though the author really wanted us to feel like we were in the shoes of the main character. That turns out to be quite a good thing too as the book is written in the first person. 

For a book that is written so simply there is a surprising range of vocabulary in there. On the surface we are made to feel like we're reading a book fit for 8 year olds, but the appearance is a deception as some of the vocabulary would be challenging for younger children.

At 252 pages it moves at quite a fast pace, I was able to plough through it in a single afternoon.. The chapters are short so it never feels like a hike from one chapter to the next and the characters are very vivid, which is where the book really shines. There is one teacher featured who I'm pretty sure exists in every single school! And she's the scariest thing ever! 😂

The book has more of a Sci fi vybe than a horror one, but that doesn't stop it from having moments of tension that make your hair stand on end. 

This is book 24 out of 52 and my scary book. 

Book Title: Crater Lake

Author: Jennifer Killick

First Published: 2020

Number of pages: 252

Suitable for: children aged 9 and up

Interesting words: Hallucinating, Pesky, 

Vendetta, Jurisdiction, Pheremone, Simeltaneously, Emerge, Aesthetically

Hybrids, Imbecile, Reverberating