Hide and Seeker, by Daka Hermon

If you are on the look out for middle grade (9-12 year olds) horror, do not miss Hide and Seeker, by Daka Hermon (Scholastic, September 2020)!  It's a page-turner full of scary.

Justin's best friend, Zee, disappeared just a week after Justin's very much loved mom died. Now a year later, Zee is back...but is not himself.  Something horrible happened to him, and he can't slot nicely back into Justin's circle of best friends (he can't even talk coherently, and his mother locks him in his room when she must leave him so he doesn't go on destructive rampages).  But regardless, his mother is throwing him a welcome back party.

As well as Justin and the two other members of the former foursome, Nia and Lyric, a couple of other neighborhood kids show up.  Zee's unable to hang out like he used to, so it's pretty depressing.  Lacking anything better to do, the kids start a game of hide and seek, but quit before it's finished.  And this seemingly harmless choice dooms them.

Because the Seeker comes for any kid who breaks the rules of the game....just like he came for Zee last year.

One by one, the kids are sucked into an evil other world, Nowhere.  Justin is the last to go, and therefore the most prepared.  He's determined to save his friends, and they have more information about the Seeker (from both Zee's incoherent snatches of rhyme and from another former victim who made it out) than most kids who are taken.  But will the camping supplies he's packed actually help against a being who makes your worst fears come true, feeding off your fear to become ever stronger?*

Nowhere is home to several hundred kids, some captured almost a century ago.  They live in constant fear, hiding from the Seeker, because at any moment whatever they are most afraid of can become real.  One girl, Mary, for instance, is constantly made to relive the horror and physical pain of being trapped in an old well with hungry rats--she is hunted by rat-snake hybrids.  Other kids are burned, stung by swarms of insects, and struck by lightning.  Some have internal fears that come true, over and over; Justin is plagued by his dead mother, a ghastly facsimile who torments him, Lyric becomes unable to find his friends, and is invisible to them, and Nia, who delights in her encyclopedic knowledge, starts to forget everything, like her grandmother has. 

Justin finds his friends, and they resolve to somehow escape the Seeker's horrible game.   Since this is a kid's book, of course they do, by being smart and working together.

After just a few chapters, it was unputdownable, and I can see this delighting its target audience lots and lots!   I myself prefer more creeping psychological horror to in your face worst fears come true, and I would have appreciated more depth to the Seeker's story, but still I was totally gripped.   I appreciated that the kids aren't little privileged white saviors--all but one of the four main kids is black, and there's a touch of racial profiling by the police, Lyric (the one white kid) has a father in jail, and Justin and his big sister are in pretty desperate financial straights.  I also appreciated what a good kid Justin is; he's being going through a horrible time even before the nightmare begins, but he's still able to look after others. 

In short, definitely offer this one to a kid who wants a terrifying trip to a hellscape of nightmares!  And when they've finished it, and are maybe ready to move past middle grade books, offer them The Call, by  Peadar Ó Guilín, which has a similar vibe.

*the camping supplies, and Lyric's more idiosyncratic packing choices (which include silly string) do indeed come in useful.