What Stalks Among Us

Starred review from July 10, 2023
After ditching an end-of-year field trip to explore rural Indiana back roads, high school seniors and queer best friends Sadie and Logan stumble across an impossibly large, unseasonal corn maze. Initially excited by their find, the pair enter the maze, only to find themselves trapped. There, doors inexplicably appear and disappear, rooms loop in on themselves, bizarre apparent reenactments detail the worst days of their lives, and corpses emerge—the grisly remnants of other trapped unfortunates as well as their own seeming body doubles. As Sadie and Logan uncover layer after layer of their increasingly horrifying reality, the duo race to solve the mystery of their entrapment before the maze swallows them for good. Via Sadie’s insightful first-person narration, Hollowell (A Dark and Starless Forest) skillfully entwines atmospheric prose bursting with 2010s pop-culture references, and disturbing scenes of body horror with sensitive explorations of neurodivergence, misogyny, internalized anti-fat bias, and emotional abuse. Sadie and Logan’s friendship serves as a strong and passionate anchor, giving heft to both the physical and interpersonal stakes of this twisted ma(i)ze of surreal psychological horror. Sadie is white; Logan reads as East Asian. Ages 13–up. Agent: Thao Le, Sandra Dijkstra Literary.

August 1, 2023

Gr 9 Up-When Sadie and Logan decide to skip the annual AP Physics trip to an amusement park, Sadie feels an ominous pull. When they happen upon a corn maze, it seems like their day of ditching will just involve a quirky side quest through something Sadie knows her way around, until they find their first dead body, and that dead body is one of them. Now Sadie and Logan must figure out why they are trapped in this corn maze and why they keep dying, before they die for good. This is an incredibly engaging read that immediately jumps into Sadie and Logan being stuck and does a good job of not confusing readers as the time loops and dead bodies in the corn maze add up. Each chapter leaves on just a bit of a cliff-hanger. Sadie's inner monologue and how she works through her ADHD and previous trauma, such as an abusive relationship mirror true life experiences that make this part of the plot relatable to readers and interestingly parallels the horror aspect. Quick and sometimes snarky dialogue give moments of levity throughout, making this not too scary but great for teens looking for darker reads. VERDICT A horrific read sure to hook many with its sinister setting, sickening mystery, strong friendship, and teen introspection.-Molly Dettmann

Copyright 2023 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2023
Two teens fight for their lives after becoming trapped inside a nightmarish corn maze. On a joyride through sprawling Indiana farmland, Sadie and her best friend, Logan, encounter an abandoned corn maze and see an adventure waiting for them. But when they turn a corner and discover a corpse that eerily resembles Logan, they realize that they're in way over their heads. This maze has a mind of its own, with rules for movement and survival that seem to be set by an unseen creator. And strangely, Sadie can't shake the feeling that they've somehow been through this maze before--perhaps many times. With no choice but to go forward in hopes of finding a way out, the two begin a harrowing, time-bending ordeal that lays bare their secrets and insecurities, putting their friendship to the test. The exposition is light in favor of jumping into the action right away; Sadie's backstory and personal traits are revealed piecemeal as the experience forces her to confront ghosts of her own trauma from past relationships. Her ADHD is notably portrayed as both a liability and an asset. Sadie is also candid about her fatness and the way she inhabits the world in a larger body. Those who stick out the rushed beginning will root for Sadie and Logan as they find strength within themselves (and each other) to escape the maze. Most major characters are white; Logan is Korean American. A trippy supernatural thriller. (Horror. 13-18)

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August 1, 2023
Grades 9-12 Instead of joining their senior class on a trip, best friends Sadie and Logan take one of their signature, meandering drives through the back roads of rural Indiana. When they come across an overgrown corn maze, they enter it (of course they do), and their adventure goes from unsettling to horrifying as they start finding dead bodies--their own dead bodies--strewn throughout. Realizing this is not the first time they've been in this predatory maze and that it has ended very poorly each time, the two use tactics they've learned in video games and pop culture as well as truths about their pasts to try to make it out before the corn absorbs them. The intentionality with which Sadie works through the ways her mental illness affects her friendship with Logan as they try to escape the maze is both raw and realistically repetitive. Hollowell (A Dark and Starless Forest, 2021) takes great care in representing anxiety, fatness, and poverty as normal and matter-of-fact aspects of her characters' lives in this thoughtful and emotional horror novel.

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