I am so excited to be a stop on the blog tour for The Creeping by Alexandra Sirowy! Scroll below for my advanced review of this creepy tale!
Release Date: August 18, 2015
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Genre: Young Adult Mystery Thriller
ISBN: 978-1481418867
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Romance, friendship, and dark, bone-chilling fear fill the pages of a summertime thriller in the spirit of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Twelve years ago Stella and Jeanie vanished while picking strawberries. Stella returned minutes later, with no memory of what happened. Jeanie was never seen or heard from again.
Now Stella is seventeen, and she’s over it. She’s the lucky one who survived, and sure, the case is still cloaked in mystery—and it’s her small town’s ugly legacy—but Stella is focused on the coming summer. She’s got a great best friend, a hookup with an irresistibly crooked smile, and two months of beach days stretching out before her. Then along comes a corpse, a little girl who washes up in an ancient cemetery after a mudslide, and who has red hair just like Jeanie did. Suddenly memories of that haunting day begin to return, and when Stella discovers that other red-headed girls have gone missing as well, she begins to suspect that something sinister is at work. And before the summer ends, Stella will learn the hard way that if you hunt for monsters, you will find them.
The Creeping was quite an exciting murder mystery, a refreshing break from the stories I’ve been reading recently. I haven’t read something so deathly and creepy in awhile so this was a treat I didn’t know I wanted so badly!
The story starts off with Stella remembering Jeanie’s disappearance and murder, an abduction she witnessed and doesn’t remember. It’s been years since the disappearance but a recent stirring of trouble in town brings up old memories, leading Stella to look for answers.
I loved that before the story really picks up, we’re grounded in Stella’s world and the characters that come in and out of her everyday life. I could visualize the world so clearly, the imagery was so well executed. The tone of this story reminded me of The Killing and Gracepoint TV series and as time went on, even a bit of the super scary Supernatural. Quite thrilling and suspenseful at times, this mystery was. Always dark and eerie.
As far as relationships go, I didn’t think that Stella’s best friend, Zoey should have been her friend at all. Time and time again, her behavior was a prime example of what a best friend is not. So this relationship was bizarre to me but people do have controlling friends so it’s not unrealistic, it was simply frustrating to see. But in my mind, these two grow apart as they get older and Stella finds a better bff so it’s all good. Same goes for Stella’s boyfriend options. There are two guys in the mix but it’s not a love triangle because neither relationship is serious, one is Zoey’s suggestion and never even really becomes anything, and this entire romance subplot is so minor, I actually wouldn’t have minded if this whole bit had been cut in favor of more creepiness. But Sam is the more serious contender here and is very helpful to Stella as she goes on the hunt for answers, so maybe if there were a handful of more romantic scenes between the two, I’d really be swooning.
Overall, I love that The Creeping is a frightening reminder that while there is always a monster in the woods, everywhere there are people and people are monsters too. And in all of this, there are people who will stand beside you to fight those monsters. Now while this novel didn’t blow me away, The Creeping is indeed a solid mystery that will quench your thirst for more from this genre. So get this when it comes out next week and prepare yourself for a hauntingly exhilarating journey.
Alexandra lives in a small town in Northern California. She enjoys writing about teens because she thinks they’re smart, have grit, are excited about engaging with the world, and are every bit as complex and dynamic as adults are. In addition to writing fiction, she loves discovering new things, traveling, sourdough bread, trees, lighthouses, seven layer cakes, reading the news, music, adventures (some risky, some not-so-much), being silly with her sister, and her (partner in crime) husband. THE CREEPING is her first novel.