Whispering Pines
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Stranger Things meets The X-Files in this eerie, heart-pounding middle grade adventure about a young boy and girl who must protect their small town from otherworldly forces threatening to destroy it.
Rae’s father vanished without a trace—and Rae knows what happened to him. But no one believes her when she says that her father didn’t run off, that he was actually taken. Now, a year of therapy later, Rae’s mother decides they need a fresh start, and so they move to a new town in the hope that life can return to normal.
The problem is, there is nothing normal about the town of Whispering Pines.
No one knows this better than Caden. He’s lived in Whispering Pines his entire life, and he’s seen more than his fair share of weird—starting with his own family, as the town is the perfect home base for his mother’s ghost hunting business.
When several kids go missing and then show up like zombies with their eyes removed, many locals brush it off. Just another day in Whispering Pines. But Caden has a dark secret, one that may explain why someone is stealing eyes. And Rae, who knows how it feels to not be believed, may be just the person Caden needs to help him put things right.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This horror series starter weaves a tense narrative within an atmospheric small town. When Rae Carter, 12, moves with her mother and older sister from Sunnyside, Calif., to Whispering Pines, Conn., she sees an opportunity to reinvent herself, leaving behind last year's identity as the "conspiracy freak" who believes her father's mysterious disappearance was orchestrated. But their new town is uncanny: bottomless sinkholes, a family of mediums and exorcists across the street, a rash of children whose eyes have been stolen by inexplicable means, and an enigmatic, supposedly benevolent company called Green On! monitoring the whole town's energy as well as the eyeless children. Befriending neighbor Caden Price, who's haunted by his missing brother, and chatterbox Vivienne Matsuoka, whose giant ever-present backpack poses another mystery, Rae delves into Whispering Pines' deadly secrets. Hoping to thwart the "serial eye snatcher" before they claim another victim, the trio must face challenges both mundane and supernatural. Though the genre-blurring inclusion of aliens alongside ghosts and monsters threatens to destabilize the various elements, Lang and Bartkowski (the Mystic Cooking Chronicles) effectively develop their heroes and setting while crafting an unpredictable, unrelenting adventure. Ages 8 12.
