Fear Ground by Jennifer Killick.
There’s a new craze at Dread Wood High. Flinch is a game of fear. The more you scare your friends, the more points on the app you get. At first it’s fun.
A really good read. Loved the cover. 5*.

Killick kills it again! I devoured this book. Fear Ground hits the same gripping heights as Dread Wood. There were parts of the book that I was gleefully repulsed by and parts that had me turning to the next chapter as I held my breath. The characters were developed more from the first book and it feels in Fear Ground we really start to understand each character's quirks and relationship to one another. Mr Conlon is, quite frankly, a bit of a dude! Fear Ground is equally horrific and laugh out loud entertainment. Brilliant.

hings, I was really pleased to be back in the world of Dread Wood High. It was great to experience the camaraderie between the members of Club Loser once again. Gustav, my favourite character, is as hilarious as ever and during some of the scarier moments (and they are plenty) it was great to have him on hand to lighten the mood. I’m also a big fan of Mr Canton, and I think that’s probably because I see myself in him and his cringeworthy attempts at being cool. For me, Jennifer Killick is an awesome author and I have seen her books picked up and read by some of the most reluctant readers. Children love her stories because they’re frightening, fast-paced, funny and full of on-trend references. Last year, after reading Crater Lake to my class, you’d hear children hilariously bawl “May the Force be with you John Cena” out on the playground. Dread Wood: Fear Ground is a terrific sequel. If you’ve not read the first, you really should. These books would be snapped up very quickly in a Year 6 classroom!

Firstly I just want to say this front cover is absolutely incredible, it reminds me of the funhouse point horror front cover which is an absolute classic and I read this when I was middle grade age a few years after its release so I think that most kids would find this appealing,
I thought the book was well written with a gripping storyline and well developed charcaters, however I didn't rea;ise this was a series and so I think that in order for everything to make sense book one should be read first. I really enjoyed it though.

Let me start with a disclaimer - I hate scary books. As a child, I lost countless nights of sleep whilst lying paralysed with fear waiting for monsters, aliens and/or ghosts to come and claim me as their victim! (R.L. Stine has a lot to answer for.) Therefore, I avoid horror like the plague - no scary movies, no fright nights and definitely no creepy books!

I found myself in a quandary, therefore, upon the release of Jennifer Killick’s first voyage into the horror genre, Crater Lake. My class and I had loved the Alex Sparrow series and Jennifer herself is one of our all-time favourite in-person authors. It was inevitable: I was going to have to break my ban and dive headfirst into horror.

And boy am I glad I did! I devoured her first series and Dread Wood is without a doubt one of my favourite books this year. Would Fear Ground live up to the lofty heights I had set for it?

As usual, Jennifer met and surpassed all expectations. Fear Ground is a genuinely frightening tale (I had to ban myself from reading it before bed) but it’s offset beautifully by her trademark comedy. Her narrative voice is superb and the character development is as good as it gets. Jennifer’s ability to create believable and hyper realistic teenage characters is unrivalled in children’s fiction, in my opinion. Her baddies are truly very bad (and epically menacing) whilst her heroes are multifaceted with flaws and individual personalities. So many children will be able to see themselves reflected in this story, which makes it a powerful addition to any classroom bookshelf.

Fear Ground is an absolute triumph - Killick has smashed it again. She’s quickly carving out her own niche and I know her latest release will be one of the first with a waiting list on my classroom bookshelf. This book is perfect for pupils in Year 6 and beyond and I recommend it without reservation. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

When requesting this book I didn’t realise it was book two of a series.

You definitely need to have read the first book in order to understand certain aspects and to get a real sense of who the characters are.

I enjoyed the little nods to pop culture and think it would be a good series for younger children to dive into!

My son aged 12 has read this 4 times, as well
as going back to reread Dreadwood since I downloaded this ARC.

In fairness I am delighted to say I will be buying this for my school as soon as it is published, along with Dread Wood.

Thanks to #NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book ahead of publication in exchange for an honest review.

Without a doubt, @JenniferKillick has upped the edge of your seat MG horror and pupils who love that adrenaline rush will absolutely need to read this. The cover alone is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies so the story...😱
Another 5* book. #RfP
@FarshoreBooks @NetGalley

The Club Loser gang are back in Jennifer Killick’s funniest, scariest book yet. She truly is the master of the comedy-horror genre for readers in that crucial primary to secondary school transition.

I laughed – I shuddered – I couldn’t put it down. Then I passed it on to my 12-year-old son (who’d been hovering nearby the entire time I was reading) and he devoured the story in two days. I could hear laughs, gasps, and “Ugh, that’s disgusting!” coming from his room. Fear Ground is brilliant for children and adults. I loved the ’80s movie references and the awkwardness of Mr Canton while it’s also fantastically gross and creepy in a way only pre-teens can truly appreciate.

In this edge-of-your-seat adventure, Angelo, Naira, Gus, Hallie, Collette and the rest of their classmates are obsessed with Flinch, a new game for their phones. Whenever the “Pop Goes the Weasel” song sounds, players have to run around trying to make each other flinch by scaring them until the final line of the song plays and the game ends. An unpredictable chain of events causes the game to take a dark turn. Suddenly, there’s no way out and nothing is as it seems.

Fear Ground is the kind of book that draws in even the most hesitant reader. It is cool, funny and absolutely one-of-a-kind.

There are some authors who, when they have a new title coming out, will have said new title added to my wish list. There are those whose reads I will ask my lovely local indie to order in for me and then there are those God tier writers whose books I need not only to possess but to have a signed – and preferably dedicated – copy. Jennifer Killick is one such author – someone whose Crater Lake and Dread Wood books have earned her the title of Queen of Middle Grade Horror and quite rightly so.

Blending moments of absolute terror with great humour through her creation of utterly credible characters and brilliantly crafted narratives in all of those titles has meant that Fear Ground has been on my TBB list for some considerable time. When the opportunity came for a sneaky early read through Net Galley, I submitted my request immediately and was thrilled to wake up to an approval email the following morning. Fully intending not to rush my read but savour it, I started out by allowing myself a couple of chapters at a time but by halfway through it was clear that that plan had fallen by the wayside. This is a story that hooks you in from the off – one which is tense, engaging and highly believable and one which has left me now desperate for Book 3 and one which is going to make the perfect return to school read for many young fans.

Our story opens with a guide to an online game called Flinch, the aim of which is – perhaps unsurprisingly – to make other players do just that. When we reacquaint ourselves with Angelo and his friends in Club Loser from Book 1 they are playing the game within Dread Wood having been drawn into downloading the app a few weeks previously like all of their peers, trying their hardest to gain points by scaring others while avoiding being scared themselves. Together with Naira, Angelo hears the musical alert to tell them that the current round has finished and they start to switch out of game mode before spotting a couple of people dressed in clown masks apparently spying on them.

After school, the friends make their way to Hallie’s house to hang out and discuss plans for the travelling fair which will be visiting the following weekend, with an exclusive Friday night event for students of Dread Wood High. As they chat about the fair’s attractions, the Flinch app on their phones alerts them to the start of a new game and they disagree about whether or not to play with so few of them being there but before they can reach an agreement, they are startled by a strange noise coming from the end of Hallie’s garden. Going to investigate, they find Hallie’s rescue chicken Michelle behaving as though possessed and after she attacks Hallie, decide to take her to the vet.

A misbehaving chicken is the least of the gang’s worries though. Forced to all take part in an extra-curricular school production in one way or another, it soon becomes clear that all at Dread Wood High is not as it should be. When Friday night comes around, it seems the whole school has turned out to visit the fair but when a new game of Flinch is initiated, nobody is interested in the rides and attractions. Who is behind the app? Who is hiding behind the masks? And can Angelo and Club Loser once again defeat the threat hidden in Dread Wood?

To me, one of the many things that Jennifer Killick excels at is drawing the characters that populate her titles. Here, as in her other books, the children are all utterly credible in the way that they speak and behave towards one another and other people. Although they form a tight-knit group, it is clear that within that group some friendships are stronger than others and that the children all have their own very different skillsets and personalities. As before, Gus provides much of the humour as does Mr Canton, who many children will recognise as that teacher who thinks he is still young and trendy but is deluding nobody but himself.

I was so excited to be accepted to read this on NetGalley after really enjoying Dread Wood. Jennifer Killick is a genius in the way she writes age-appropriate MG horror and this was no exception. The children in my Y6 class really enjoyed her books last year so I can’t wait to share them with my upcoming class, especially this one when it’s released!

Dread Wood Fear Ground is another terrifyingly good kids' horror story from the wonderful Jennifer Killick, who is really staking her claim as the queen of middle grade horror!.

It's gruesome and creepy and funny, everything I've come to hope for and expect, as she just gets better and better with each book.

Before we get to the horror though, the heart of this book is the friendship circle, Club Loser. They've grown since book one, and Colette is now firmly a member of the group, making for some interesting shifts in dynamics but that feeling of companionship, of people who are always there for each other and would do anything for each other is stronger than ever! Clearly almost dying together forged a strong bond! They still have that Breakfast Club vibe of kids of very different types thrown together in detention and finding that they have more in common than differences, but this is used to great effect not only to give each character their own feel but also to highlight some important and oft-ignored issues.

Money troubles is the most obvious one, and Angelo is still very much representative of those kids in a school who don't have the money for new clothes or shiny gadgets, who have to make do with what they can, who know exactly how much lunch money they can afford to spend and exactly what it will cost them. This is contrasted pretty sharply with Hallie in particular, and I loved the descriptions of her house and how fancy it seemed to the others, with a spare bedroom and artisan crisps! It's done with a light touch and a sensitivity but hopefully it'll help to raise awareness and build empathy among school children reading it.

Something else touched upon but not explored in great detail is Gus and his stoma bag. I liked the way this was handled. He has one, he jokes about it, it's there, but it's not a huge issue. It just is. It's cleverly done and I'm sure it'll find its audience who'll really understand and appreciate it, as well as those who go away thinking about it.

Okay, enough heartwarming friendship and representation. What about the horror?

Oh. My. Goodness!

Jennifer Killick can absolutely bring the horror, and she does not hold back! There's a new game in school, all around scaring each other and making people flinch. But is there more to it than simple schoolyard scares? Well, yes of course there is! Some familiar villains make a very creepy return, and this time they're nastier than ever! Where the Dread Wood narrative happened over a single day in an abandoned school, Fear Ground happens over a longer period and the whole school is involved. The horror sequences are played out to a tune of Pop Goes The Weasel too, and I defy you not to hear it in your head and shiver. It's the perfect musical accompaniment, childlike and fun on the outside but pretty creepy when you think about it, and the book perfectly matches that slow ominous build up as we wait for the jack in the box to go POP. The spiders of the first book are long gone, but, if anything, they've been replaced by another even nastier biological horror. And as Jennifer winds up the music box, the tension slowly builds up to the fair ground coming to town, and a truly breathtaking climax.

Oh, and Mr Canton has to be one of the most excruciatingly embarrassing and funny characters I've come across in a very long time. He had me cringing so hard!

Will you flinch? I did.

Wow! This book had me on the edge of my seat so many times, I couldn’t put it down. The way the characters have been developed from the 1st book is lovely and the way their friendship grows through the book is fantastic. Humour is used at just the right moments to relieve the tension. There are twists and turns that I didn’t see coming and would never have guessed. Such a well thought out plot, different from other stories I have read.