I read and reviewed this book for a blog tour, so thank you to the blog tour organiser for having me on this tour. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Hallie, Gustav, Naira and Angelo don't usually hang out together at school, let alone on a Saturday. But these four teens are on detention together for their behaviour in their school canteen. I really appreciate this. I have a very low scare bar, particularly with the grosser/body horror side of things (which this series does include. The worms? UGH! *shudders*) Having a mix of comedy and horror here gives you space to be scared but also recover a little before the next sequence, moderating just how tense you can get (and then making the next jump worse than if it had come immediately after the previous.) This has serious Goosebumps by RL Stine vibes. All the way through this, I kept comparing it to the earlier books in the series, mainly Stay Out of the Basement (I was going to say one or two others, but I haven't read the series in nearly 20 years so my memory is shot). It was a fast paced, spooky middle-grade read that Goosebumps and Crater Lake fans will devour.

She has five children and step-children and says if you ever listen to children in the playground or playing on an Xbox it’s “jokes, jokes, jokes” all the time. Gus, for example, is based on a friend of her son’s who is always trying to distract or entertain by being funny and she loved the idea of including a character where you never know what they are going to come out with. They know each other by name, reputation or being in classes together at primary school, but have barely spoken to each other in years.In this exclusive World Book Day story, Angelo and the rest of Club Loser must venture deep into the tunnels underneath Dread Wood High to rescue their favourite teacher, Mr Canton. But more hideous creations live in the Latchitts’ old laboratories . . . and they’re hungry! Can Club Loser stop these creatures from escaping into the world and make it out of the tunnels in one piece? Read it and see, if you dare! I would HIGHLY recommend this book to all, and thanks to The Write Reads tour for allowing me to be part of the tour!

Hallie, Angelo, Gus and Naira aren’t friends, just classmates. They know each other in that awkward way of school friends, where you’ve spent a lot of time in close proximity but don’t really know each other. And I like that a lot. It meant that I got to enjoy reading their friendships build and them learning each others strengths under… extremely creepy stress. I ended the book really loving all four of them, and I can’t wait to read more of the series to see more of their character arcs. There are SO MANY references and I love love it! Scooby Doo, talk about my sweet raptors (and then decided who is who and finding out who really are the raptors), Jurassic Park/World, there is mention of anime (Gustav, yas), Harley Quinn, and more. I had so much fun finding all the references and then squeeing in delight at them. It made the book even more fun to read.

If you thought hide and seek could be dull, this book introduces a new version called Flinch that is anything but dull. Everyone is hider and seeker at once, trying to scare others with the creepy addition of the Pop Goes the Weasel song. We open with a tense game of it, and its involvement in the book only gets more sinister as unexplained events happen during it. Coffee house Caffè Nero has announced the 16-strong shortlist for the inaugural Nero Book Awards, recognising the outstanding books of the past 12... 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. Without giving too much away, Dread Wood features an incredibly scary spider. Did you base it on a real-life creature? Trigger warnings: death, animal death, violence, gore, blood, falling down holes, SPIDERS (very big TW!!), revenge.

OK, this is so going to be a hard review to write, so bear with me, because it may get very messy. Haha. XD I don't read a whole lot of middle grade but the synopsis of this one had me intrigued. When I started the book I had planned on taking my time with it and reading it over a few days but once I started it I couldn't stop reading it. I ended up reading this in one sitting and I don't do that very often these days. The 'Flinch' app craze has swept through the students of Dread Wood High. The more you scare your friends, the more points on the app you get. At first it's fun, but soon fun is replaced by fear - especially when most rounds seem to start in the eerie Dread Wood, where the teens were forced to defeat killer spiders in the previous instalment of the horror series. Angelo, Gus, Naira, Hallie and Collette set about to try and find a way to bring the deadly duo down, but once the Latchitts discover they're onto them, Club Loser is in grave danger. They'll stop at nothing until their evil master plan is complete. The gang find themselves in several spine-chilling situations but the chapter in the girls' toilets was so freaky!The ending was just a big NOPE-fest, but very awesome! And it definitely opens up A LOT of possibilities for next books. The banter between these teens is often funny, even in the middle of the all-out action. The relationship that builds between this mix of personalities is heartening. Dread Wood captivated me from the start. It is very fitting to be compared to RL Stine. I felt like I was watching an episode of 'Are you Afraid of the Dark?'