It's All Part Of The Show!

 

Hey all!  Welcome back to the campfire. Tonight's tale of terror is brought to you by Kayla Cottingham. Like its two predecessors, this author's unknown to me, but, you're interested in the book.  So let's dive into it.  Submitted for the approval of those who are following, I call this: The Review Of The Tale Of The Vanishing Circus.

   Characters: Riley Beasley, Genevieve Monroe

Premise: When two best friends stumble upon a strange circus, they end up with more than they bargained for.

Riley and Genna are two thirteen-year-old best friends who couldn't be more different.  Riley's studious and focused on getting out their hometown of Lake Glory while Genna's very bouncy/happy, likes to have a good time and obsessed with the paranormal after binging the X-Files on DVD with her father, which, I mean, it's X-Files, I was watching that show as well as Buffy around that age, so it was kind of cool to see it get a shout out.  

Anyways, our story starts with Riley at the school library studying and avoiding Genna because of her new-found paranormal obsession, and Genna comes up to her all excited about a blood moon as it's supposedly the best time to hunt for ghosts---which, whether or not that's true, I have no idea since ghost-hunting isn't my jam-----and Riley brushes her off.  However, later that night, Genna talks Riley into investigating when they see strange lights in the forest near their houses and they're drawn in when they realize it's a circus that's being set up and that it seems to be entirely run by kids, which, who wouldn't like something like that when you're a teen?

Despite her initial misgivings, Riley ends up being enticed by the circus' set up and the ringmaster Starr---who's all of sixteen, I believe----causing her to dismiss some strange things such as Starr's hand being boney when she and Genna first encountered her, a boy falling from a thirty-foot drop and surviving after it looked like he had died, and the lack of adults, and when Starr asks her and Genna to join them, Riley's all for it, while Genna is the one who insists that something's off, citing all of the previous things that had happened as well as revealing that she recognized one of the performers as someone who had gone missing decades prior and insists that they're all ghosts.  Of course, Riley doesn't listen, which is pretty par for the course for these types of stories, which leads to a big fight between the girls and Genna storms off.

Of course, Genna turns out to be right and as it happens, the blood moon is what allowed the circus to be visible to outsiders and the rule was that if the person who was invited into the circus stayed within the fairgrounds past sunrise, they would become part of it.  The two girls fight to escape, getting help from one of the youngest members of the troop---a boy named Freddie---and they end up being captured by Starr who try to keep them in the circus, but Riley reminds her that it has to be their choice to stay and that it's not fair to anyone for her to keep them all tethered to the circus just because it was what she wanted and when she found out that every single ghost felt that way, she released them and allowed everyone to move on, which I felt was a little anti-climatic, but I think they were trying to show that kids don't always make the best choices, even when you're a ghost, so from that angle, it makes sense.  I thought the story was enjoyable and I would give it a solid 9.

And with that, I declare this review finished.