Fiends on the Other Side Blog Tour + Review

If you are looking for a Middle-Grade Halloween read, look no further. This book even creeped me out as a college student, and I don’t always feel much when I read horror novels. 

Jamal has struggled with living in his slightly-older twin brother’s shadow for years. No one notices him unless they are getting ready to bully him. His superpower seems to be being invisible while his brother’s power seems to be being perfect in every way. Malik always checks in with his brother and tries to protect him, but it isn’t enough for Jamal to feel any better. Then, Dr. Facilier appears and wants to solve Jamal’s problem. He promises to make Jamal not invisible anymore, in exchange for the creepy skull necklace he received from his recently deceased grandmother. Jamal isn’t sure whether or not to trust the Doctor, but he has to make a choice. 

I saw Princess and the Frog in theaters when it first came out, and it was one of the scariest movies I’d ever watched at 9 years old. I was a bit of a wimp and hadn’t watched many scary movies then, and I had no older siblings trying to trick me into watching scary things, so this movie stayed on my mind for quite a while. Shadows are already scary things, so a movie preying on those fears and turning them into very real monsters was terrifying to me. Well, scary until I got the DS game on my 10th birthday and loved learning how to evade the shadows on all the levels. This book took me right back to the time I was originally watching that film and remembering how scary shadows can be after all. The pacing kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time, just like the movie did years ago!

Jamal was a very relatable MC. He is only 12, and feeling like you live in your sibling’s shadow at that age can be a big problem many kids face. I feel like middle-grade readers will like reading about Jamal because he might remind him of themselves. This book, therefore, teaches a lesson about how to make a space for yourself and move out of the mindset of being in the shadows. 

This book was a fairly short read, around 200 pages but the text is larger print so I was able to finish the entire thing in around an hour and a half of reading altogether. I would definitely think that this book would be doable for the average 10-13-year-old, I would even say that someone who read Series of Unfortunate Events level of reading books could get through this with ease. 

I would recommend this to anyone looking for a new horror middle grade book to read. 

I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review. 

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 books.