e-ALC, 07:32:23
Narrated by: Jeff Ebner
Release Date: August 26, 2025
Published by: Books on Tape
Read from: August 25-26, 2025
Stand-alone
Source: PRH Audio App (I received a free ALC from the publisher and their audio app. This did nothing to influence my review)
Content Warning:
For Readers Interested In: Audio, Horror, Sparkly Cover, Middle Grade, Most AnticipatedFull of chills and twists, a twelve-year-old boy is thrilled that he’ll get to play endless games at his family’s arcade, but soon realizes he’s in the fight of his life when he’s forced to save himself and his possessed Uncle from a sinister video game.
Danny is spending a week with his Uncle Bill who runs a massive retro arcade called PixelWorks. His only plan is to play as many games as possible from open to close, but he wasn’t expecting to find the Holy Grail of arcade collectors, a gruesome looking game titled Grin.
Anyone who plays the game becomes surprisingly violent, and soon with the help of his friend Jodi and a knowledgeable videogame streamer, Danny realizes that Grin holds the soul of a dead serial killer.
Soon, the killer makes the jump into Bill’s body, and it’s up to Danny to figure out a way to stop him for good.
*MY THOUGHTS*
It’s been a while since I read a MG horror book that was actually creepy, but this one definitely fit the bill. I loved this one so much. Not only is it kinda scary, but it also about something that’s really relatable to them. I can tell this is going to be a hit with the kiddos.
Ok so the main thing I liked about this one was the characters. I LOVED Danny. He was just a kid who really liked video games. But he came upon the wrong one with his uncle. And I just…. whew like look how this thing looks. Why in the world would you buy this for your arcade? I was so mad at the uncle because wtf. I was also pretty scared of the uncle too after that scissor thing. Yeah that made me yell at Danny through the book to “just stay away from him!”
I also liked that this was actually really funny. And I mean I know it’s called Grin and the people who play the game had this weird upbeat, smile thing happening, but this was more than that. The cake thing was sad, but also funny. I could picture what he did in my head. And then there was the quote about the Coke that I found hilarious for some reason. It was a large reminder of what these were kids and the things that they found important we probably said no to giving them lol
So the scary bit of this was the fact of what it was attached to. All of these kids have Switches that are attached to their hand, so it wasn’t hard to see something like this spreading so easily with the way they are so into their phones and Switches. And let me be clear, this is kinda like the PG version of the Smile movie, and it worked really well. First they get aggressive, but the way that one person was all smiley and whistling and stuff…. Yeah that would have freaked me out too lol It was just a lot.
This was a lot more fun than I expected it to be. I don’t think I knew what I was getting myself into. I liked it so much I went to look at the author’s back log and it snapped me out of this real quick. There is a big spider on the cover of their debut. So basically, I’ll just mind my business over here from now lol
Overall, I give this
