By Juno Dawson
A boy who can't accept his girlfriend's death finds a group that promises to bring her back. What returns is not her.
Samuel's girlfriend Eliza dies in a car crash, and he blames himself. He can't eat, can't sleep, can't let her go. Then he remembers an aunt who used to dabble in hoodoo, and a thought takes hold that he can't shake: maybe there's a way to bring Eliza back. He finds the aunt, and she pulls him into an occult group that promises to do exactly that. The bargain costs something, though, and what comes back is not what he was promised. It starts quiet and tightens page by page, and the floor tends to drop out well before the end.
What Dawson pulls off, and most scary stories for this age don't, is growing the fear straight out of grief. The frightening turn is not really the ritual or the thing that comes back; it is how far Samuel will go rather than accept that Eliza is gone, and what that refusal opens the door to. Because every step is powered by real sorrow and guilt, the dread carries weight, and by the end the sad ache and the fear are the same feeling. That is what pulls you to the last page.