The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding has all the elements of a Junior Fiction novel. Prosper is 12 years old, doesn't quite fit in at school, and has a talent he's embarrassed to talk about.
And yet there are elements that are (in my opinion) a little mature for the age group.
there is a demon trapped inside Prosper, a malevolent being who wants to trick Prosper into selling his soul.
Ad the story goes on, it is revealed that Prosper's ancestor, Honor, made a deal with the Demon so that his family would be successful, but also that his rival's family would suffer.
Only Honor broke the contract, and now the demon is out for revenge.
So Prosper has roughly 2 weeks to figure out how to get rid of the demon and banish him so that he can't ruin (and perhaps kill) his family.
The Book is mostly serious, but it has some humor to it such as Alastor, the 800 year old demon, having difficulty adjusting to the modern world. It's almost endearing. It's hard not to like him, actually.
Actually, pretty much throughout the whole book I found myself hoping Al would redeem himself somehow. Aside from him calling Prosper "Maggot" all the time, he's actually a pretty likable character.
There were only a few characters I didn't like, but those were the bad guys, so that was OK.
All in all this book kept me interested all the way to the end. It was hard to put down. The writing style is great, and the plot twist at the end is epic.