This one had a bit of a rocky start, so took me a bit to get into. The first introduction of Andy made her completely unsympathetic and I was prepared to dislike her throughout the entire book. And when the book starts out and you’re not sure you are going to like one of the main ones, it can make it a difficult read. However, I pushed through and I’m glad I did so I did ultimately enjoy the story.

This is a hodgepodge of a lot of pop culture and literary things. There was the obvious Scooby-Doo reference as well as Lovecraft. There was also the nostalgia of being in the early nineties (there was a scene involving a cordless phone at one point that gave me pause on why it was a big deal until I remembered this). So, if you like all those things then you will probably enjoy this.
There were some drawbacks though, related mainly to the writing style. There were a few points where the format would go from the traditional storytelling to a play format with the character’s names, their dialogues, and their actions in parenthesis. There were also a few instances of breaking the literary fourth wall and characters drawing attention to that they were in a book. By that I mean lines that would read things like “re-reading the last line of dialogue” or “realizing that the ending of the last chapter was bullshit”. It wasn’t enough to detract from the enjoyment but it was startling to see and in some instances really disrupted the flow of the story.
The overall mystery was good. As readers, we knew going in that this was going to be a case where there were really monsters involved. There were quite a few twists that I didn’t fully see and by the end they kept coming. There were also developments that I didn’t see as well as other aspects I didn’t expect (to say more would be spoiler territory). The ending seemed abrupt to me and there wasn’t a real resolution to anything. I don’t know if this is because anther one is planned or if the author just wanted an ambiguous ending but it did leave me wanting a bit more resolution.
It took awhile to get through because of the pacing, the jarring changes in storytelling pattern, and the overall language usage (it read like it was a translated work even though I don’t think it was). However, it was still enjoyable for me and I would recommend it a fan of the things listed above.