One of the questions asked about this book on Goodreads is “Is this like a Pretty Little Liars fanfiction? It kinda sounds like it…” and honestly, that’s probably all you need to know (the answer is no, but probably could be without too much effort). But I have to give you more than that!
“All of Fright Farm’s success is based on how much people love to be scared in a controlled environment. There’s something deeply satisfying about confronting a monster and escaping unscathed. Real monsters aren’t anything like that. They don’t let go”
Honestly, I did enjoy this little thriller — it’s exactly what it needs to be. Ellery and Ezra are teenage twins — they’ve moved to their mother’s small town home to live with their grandmother. When their mother was 17, her twin sister disappeared. 5 years ago, so did the homecoming queen. And now that Ellery and Ezra have moved in, another popular girl goes missing as graffiti begins to appear — graffiti that threatens the homecoming court. So it’s your basic “teenagers try to solve a mystery while also doing teenage stuff” kind of book. If it were a movie (or a TV series!), they would all be played by very pretty twenty somethings. And of COURSE, there’s a haunted house in town that everyone works at.
I read McManus’s One of Us Is Lying last year, and I don’t think this one is quite as good, although the concepts are similar. This book had a LOT of characters. While this made it really hard to figure out the whodunit part, it also made it really hard to keep track of everyone. Especially since we’re watching 3 separate timelines (their aunt, the court 5 years ago, and present day), all with their own disappearing girls and possible suspects. I did listen to the audio version — not sure if that contributed to my confusion or not — but man, there are a lot of teenagers in this book.