Love Elyse Willems!

I am a big fan of Elyse Willlems because of Funhaus on YouTube, so I was interested to see how she fared in her first self-published novel. A Night in Halloween House is a fairly standard plot for a great Halloween middle-grade story. Our main character, Billy, and all his friends are finally allowed to go trick-or-treating on Halloween, and they’re beyond thrilled about it. Being young kids, they get up to hijinks and find themselves stuck inside the one house in town everyone thinks is haunted. The kids must work together to stay away from bullies and get through a night in the haunted house without succumbing to ghosts and the things that go bump in the night.

I like how this had a pretty standard “kids getting stuck in a haunted house” plot, but it didn’t at all feel contemporary. This might be the perfect book for parents who want something fun and different to read to their kids, as there is a ton of nostalgia for we Millenials/gen Xers. It has enough throwback references to a time and place we all enjoyed as kids but also has that bit of terror that younger kids love in stories like this.

This a fun new title to add to your holiday reading collection. I enjoyed this! There are a few nitpicks with grammar and such, but I will chalk all of that up to this title as a first-time self-published author, so those elements will improve if Elyse releases another book (which I hope she does)!

Title: A Night in Halloween House
Author: Elyse Willems
Format: Paperback
Pages:  147
ISBN: 9781735982410

Three Descriptors: Fun, Nostalgic, Charming

Read Alikes:
Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
The Clackity by Lora Senf
Spirit Hunters by Ellen Oh