Blog Tour: Scareground

Blurb

Roll up, roll up, the Scareground is in town!

Twelve-year-old Nancy Crumpet lives above a bakery and her life is a delightful mix of flour, salt, and love. Yet her mind is brimming with questions no one can answer: Why did her birth parents disappear? Why can she speak with the sky? And why must she keep her mysterious birthmark hidden?

Everything is about to change when the Scareground returns to Greenwich. Nancy is convinced it holds the answers to her parents’ disappearance. Nancy and her best friend Arthur Green meet the fair’s spooky owner, Skelter, and discover a world full of dark magic and mystery. Nancy must confront her greatest fears to get to the truth. But is she ready for all the secrets the Scareground will reveal?

My Review:

What a perfect setting for a middle grade horror! There is always something sinister about carnivals and fairgrounds, and Scareground is no exception. In fact, it’s worse than most!

There is a lot to love in this book. First of all, the scareground itself, its creepy rides and spooky illusions. I loved the street urchins Nancy meets there – Waltzer and his friends (Shy, Racer and Dodge). Skelter Tombola is suitably creepy, the fortune teller and the other carnival folk add to the atmosphere. The black balloons and the feathers, the creeping darkness and the slugs…all these elements would have thrilled (and possibly terrified!) me as a child.

Nancy’s ability to talk to the sky, and her lovely silver horse mark on her wrist were also intriguing, and I liked her friendship with Arthur. I really enjoyed my time in the scareground. Outside of the scareground, I struggled a little to understand Nancy who seemed to treat her parents as kindly retainers that she had recently met rather than people who had adopted her when she was a baby. I had no sense of her life there before Skelter Tombola came to town, or of Greenwich at all. Fortunately most of the story takes place in the scareground so this is only a minor niggle, which I doubt would bother any child.

Overall, Scareground is an imaginative and spooky tale that is bound to delight young (and not so young) horror readers.

Thanks to #TheWriteReads for having me on the tour and to Neem Tree Press/NetGalley for the eARC. Scareground was published on 7th September. Check out the rest of the tour below for more reviews.

About the Author

Angela Kecojevic is a senior librarian, author and creative writing tutor. She has written for the Oxford Reading Tree programme and the multi-award-winning adventure park Hobbledown where her characters can be seen walking around, something she still finds incredibly charming!

She is a member of the Climate Writers Fiction League, a group of international authors who use climate issues in their work. Angela lives in the city of Oxford with her family.

Valinora Troy

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18 responses to “Blog Tour: Scareground”

    • I was disappointed with the worldbuilding (not a realistic depiction of family life at all!) outside the scareground, but I think kids will lap up the creepy fair and won’t worry about anything else 🙂

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    • It’s quite high on middle grade horror and spookiness I think (demon, creeping darkness and slugs!) but there is also a lot on friendship and discovering family secrets and so on. Thanks for reading, Rosi!

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