Hide and Seeker by Daka Hermon

 

Yesterday, I finished reading Hide and Seeker by Daka Hermon. In this horror novel, Justin and his friends, Nia and Lyric, are invited to a party at their other friend Zee's house soon after he returned from being mysteriously gone for a year. At the party, Justin, Nia, and Lyric, along with three other kids from the neighborhood, decide to play a game of Hide and Seek while waiting for Zee to come outside. As Justin finds the others, they all start breaking the rules that they agreed upon before playing the game. Then, Zee comes outside and tries to warn them of the danger they're in even though they think something is wrong with him. When they begin disappearing one by one, they realize that Zee was right and the same thing is happening to them that happened to him the previous year. Marked by the Seeker, a shadowy monster whose game is a terrifying version of Hide and Seek, Justin and his friends are pulled into its realm of Nowhere where they have to face their fears by playing the game to escape and go back home.

This book was excellent, and I enjoyed it so much. From the beginning, I was drawn in by the mystery of Zee's disappearance and wanted to understand what exactly happened to him in the time that he was gone. When the kids that played Hide and Seek with Justin started disappearing, I was truly worried because it didn't seem like the police were taking the situation as seriously as they should. It didn't surprise me that Justin, Nia, Lyric, and Quincy began doing their own investigating, and I'm glad that they did because they learned that they could bring things, like a backpack full of supplies, into Nowhere before they were all gone. The time that Justin and his friends spent in Nowhere was both horrifying and suspenseful, but it was interesting to learn what each of them feared the most. I also like how they befriended two other kids, Duke and Mary, in Nowhere. I was certainly on the edge of my seat during the kids' final confrontation with the Seeker. There was even a moment when I was anxious that one of the kids would betray them all. The ending was perfect, though, even if it left a few loose threads for future books. All in all, Hide and Seeker is an awesome choice for anyone who likes scary stories.