A Book Review - Trick or Treat by Richie Tankersley Cusick (Point Horror)

I don't think I've ever given 5 stars to a Point Horror - except perhaps LJ Smith's Forbidden Game trilogy, and I have that from a different publisher - but this one deserves it. It has everything that I want from YA horror - a small-town setting, an interesting plot, a villain that I wasn't expecting, a heroine that I empathise with (well, mostly), romance (there's never enough romance for love-junkie me, but this had more than most), supporting characters that I would want for my own friends were they real.

The book is - obviously - set around Halloween. Autumn is my favourite time of year and Halloween is my favourite holiday ever, so instant bonus points there. Martha has just moved to a creepy old house in a small town after her father decided to get married and spring it on Martha as a surprise. Nice parenting there, Dad. Dad and Martha move from Chicago to small-town Bedford, and two or three days later Dad and Sally - new stepmama - jet off to Hawaii on a work assignment / honeymoon, leaving Martha, who looks about 12 and has an emotional, sensitive, easily-spooked nature, in the care of new stepbrother Conor, who is a year older and whom Martha has met once.

Let me just say now, this chick has my sympathy, and I'm more than willing to forgive her any histrionics she may have down the line. My own mother had some strange ideas about parenting, and became emotionally (and occasionally physically) absent a couple times when she had a new boyfriend, but if she'd pulled that kind of junk I'd have been on the next plane to stay with relatives.

So Martha has complicated feelings for Conor - it's implied, but never outright stated, that she fancies or maybe loves him but also finds him disturbingly intense - and is alone with him in this spooky old house, and has to face a new school a month and a half after the year has started. Luckily she makes friends with the Chambers cousins: Blake, the charismatic basketball player / Big Man On Campus; Wynn, gentle and introverted; and Greg, a teacher and school counsellor in his late twenties.

The Chamberses are a little shocked at first, because Martha reminds them of Elizabeth Bedford, a friend of Wynn's (and ex of Blake's) who lived in Martha's house and was murdered a year ago on Halloween. Martha and Wynn become good friends and Martha and Blake start dating, but her happiness is diminished by the creepy house, and the strange things that happen in it: the scarecrow with the carving knife in its head that she finds in a tree by the porch, the shadowy figure she keeps seeing in her closet, the cold drafts in her bedroom, the fire that starts downstairs while she's asleep, the figure in the upstairs window, and the threatening phone calls from someone who calls her Elizabeth.

I love the creepy atmospherics of this book - Richie Tankersley Cusick's gothic horror style is so very well-suited to Halloween. The decaying old Bedford place, the time of year, the alien feeling one gets from being thrown into a new family, new home, new school - they all combine to make an atmosphere that's truly chilling even before the weird things start happening. The weird stuff ratchets the tension up a notch, and then a couple more, until I was unable to put the book down and ended up sitting in a bath that had long since got cold.

Martha is a bit more emotional than I usually like my heroines, but considering her situation I'm inclined to cut her some slack. LJ Smith aside, Conor, Martha's stepbrother, is probably one of the sexiest and most intriguing male leads I've come across in YA horror, or any YA fiction for that matter. The hint of romance between them adds tension but also comfort. (I've been arguing the potential existence of this with people online, and some are insistent that it's not there while others are equally insistent that it is - but that's the delight of a Cusick story, I guess. There's always a certain amount of ambiguity.) Certainly the scenes where they're giving each other support are among the most heartwarming - and in some ways heartbreaking - that I've read within the genre.

The Chambers cousins, as supporting characters, aren't as fleshed-out as I'd like, but I like what's there.

The only criticism I have of this book is the same one I have for all of Ms Cusick's: it's not long enough. This is, of course, not the fault of the author who was likely labouring under a maximum word-count, to fit in with other Point Horrors. Not all Point Horror books could be turned into longer stories, but Ms Cusick writes such nicely twisty plots and interesting enough characters that I find myself wanting to know much more about them. Even as a 200-pager, though, it's pretty close to being a perfect YA novel.

Verdict: Quite possibly the best Point Horror I've read.