by Mortimus Clay
ages: 9-12
First sentence: “All the doors were locked, all the windows were latched, and everything was perfectly secure the night the bogeyman came.”

The premise for this book is an interesting one: a boy, Trevor, lives in a world where bogeymen are real. They are your friends, they know what’s best for you. Except Trevor keeps having dreams about a time before, a time when he had parents, when he was truly happy. One day, he mentions this in class, and suddenly his world changes: he’s whisked away, and in order to avoid Certain Doom, he must find a way to escape.

And it sounded like it would have a Lemony Snicket feel to it, since the author — one Mortimus Clay — is “the most prolific author writing posthumously in the world today. The modest Clay is not given to sweeping generalizations, but he has this on the highest authority.” A dead author writing kids books? What’s not to love?

Well… lots.

I tried to read it. Really, I did. Picked it up and put it down at least a half-dozen times. And every time, I would look at the words, I would try to get into the story, but it eluded me. I tried to get past the stilted dialogue and the clunky sentences, and find the good story in there, but it eluded me, too.

So, about 100 pages into the nearly 250 page book, when nothing remarkable had happened (and yet, I was left with a feeling — that did not elude me — that something remarkable *should* have happened), I bailed.

Hopefully, since the author is dead, he won’t mind the negative review.