A Review of Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Scooby Doo meets Cthulhu.

13 years after teen detectives, the Blyton Summer Detective Club, solved their final case, they are still haunted by the past. Something wasn't right, there was more to the neatly wrapped up case than they realized back then.

Now it's 1990 and the team is scattered- all twenty somethings out in the big bad world trying to find their way. One is in a mental hospital, one isn't living up to her potential, one is a vagabond traveling from place to place and getting in trouble along the way, and another- the one who seemed to have "made it" out in the world- he's dead from an overdose.

It's time to get back together and put right whatever went wrong on that last case.

So the team gets back together, even Peter, the dead one, Nate's the only one that can see him. Throughout the story you wonder if Peter is really a ghost or just a figment of Nate's imagination. Nate clearly wonders this himself.

Back to Blyton Hills they go...and boy have things changed. No longer a bustling mining town, now it's more of ghost town which just lends to the overall creepiness. Evil lurks under the lake and in the old mansion but who is behind it all, and why?

The meddling kids (who are no longer kids) will stop at nothing to learn the truth because their lives literally depend on it.

A phenomenal story that pays homage to Scooby Doo and Lovecraft, has a bit of a Buffy twist and finished off with a dash of Stranger Things thrown in. I really enjoyed the overall story. Twisted and dark, part mystery, part horror, part sci-fi. It's a genre bending mash up that will hook you. There's even a bit of romance, but it's not what you'd expect at all. The characters pay homage to the original cast of Scooby Doo right down to the dog but are well developed and fleshed out on their own, they are more than mere caricatures of the Scooby cast.

One thing did bother me though- the book bounced around in style. In the middle of your average novel setting it turns into a screenplay format complete with dialogue, scene directives and thoughts from the author peppered with made up words. But I enjoyed the story enough that after the first couple instances of this switch up my brain just ignored the change in format and I continued on with the story...because the story is that good.

I give it 4 stars for the story. I would have given it 5 but the awkward formatting, odd words and sometimes clunkiness knocked it down a star.

Also there is a mention of Rage Against the Machine- who did not exist in 1990. They didn't form until 1991. Their first album released in 1992 and they hit the scene hard at Lollapalooza in 1993. I am a stickler for accurate music in period books. It's an odd little pet peeve of mine.

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I received this review copy from DoubleDay in exchange for an honest review.