Reading: SMALL SPACES - Katherine Arden

The bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale returns with a middle-grade novel that follows a young girl named Ollie - quiet and withdrawn and consumed with grief since the death of her mother - whose love of books finds her one day rescuing a slim novel from the hands of what appears to be a crazy, babbling lady about to throw it into a river. Escaping with the book, entitled Small Spaces, that night Ollie begins to read the story of a young woman from many years ago, caught in a love triangle between two brothers until one of them makes an ominous deal with someone called The Smiling Man, throwing everything into darkness. The next day, a school field trip to a local farm sends Ollie reeling when she not only finds out the farm's owner is the very woman she rescued Small Spaces from the day before ... but also discovers, in the nearby woods, a tiny makeshift cemetery that includes grave markers featuring the names of the main characters from the book! The adventure is just beginning, however, when the school bus breaks down soon after leaving the farm for the day, the many ominous scarecrows surrounding the property seeming to be taking an interest in the children as darkness grows closer - and their creepy bus driver warns Ollie that, once darkness falls, someone will be coming for them, and it won't be help. When the digital watch Ollie wears on her wrist - her mother's watch, which hasn't run in ages - suddenly starts again with a countdown and the word "RUN" printed below it, Ollie escapes the bus with only two of her classmates freaked out enough to accompany her, the three children running into the woods as Ollie remembers the warning she'd been given earlier, both in her book and by the bus driver: "Avoid large spaces; keep to small." Particularly for a middle-grade novel, Small Spaces is pretty creepy, with more than a couple moments that lay a chill up your spine, Ollie, with her friends Coco and Brian, make a formidable trio who bond over trying to solve this bizarre mystery while trying to escape to just get home alive. And though the ending, to me, felt a bit rushed and anticlimactic, the story itself and what the book has to say about grief and friendship and trust all make this a fun, chilling ghost story that goes deeper than just a great Halloween-time read. 4/5 stars