I received an ARC through my library job

This was an insanely fast read! If you're also scared of everything around Halloween time (clowns are the devil) but also want to read something a bit creepy, this would be a REALLY good option. This is a pretty satisfying stand alone. It's got a solid pace and two really likable main characters as well as a solid wrap up and unlikable villain.

Ryn and Ellis are pretty well developed characters but I felt Ryn's siblings were kind of just thrown in and forgotten after Ryn and Ellis went into the forest to start adventuring. I really loved how Lloyd-Jones wrote the parents of Ryn (and her siblings) and Ellis. Even though they aren't present for like 99% of the book, I felt an ache in my heart.

My beef with this book was the romance. I can't figure out why it was in here. It just suddenly makes an appearance in the last third of the book and contributed ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the plot or characters. I was THRILLED that the characters were going to be just friend and then all of a sudden a random kiss is thrown in. Either the romance build up/tension was really badly written in the first two thirds and suddenly changed in the last third OR it was originally just a friendship and then the publisher told the author it needed a romance so she changed what she could. In the end, it was just completely unnecessary.

Anyways, Bone Houses is probably the coolest name ever for skeleton zombie things. Just sayin'.