13-year-old Mystery—who was abandoned in a cemetery and raised in a funeral home—is plagued by sleep paralysis and the smell of ghosts, but she’s used to that. Even though her life might seem “strange” on the outside, she loves it.
That is until a priceless heirloom goes missing and her family’s funeral home is in danger of being shut down. To clear her Tia’s good name, Mystery embarks on an adventure to figure out what really happened to the misplaced necklace.
But to do so, she must contend with the angry patriarch of the town’s wealthiest family, a sleep paralysis demon, a graverobber, and the ghastly half-vampire, half-ghost that’s lurking in the Olde Ellis Town Cemetery.
There are some reviews where I put an undue amount of pressure on myself to “get it right.” Books that I think are really special, and I badly want to be able to articulate just what it was about the book that I loved so much. This is one of those times.
I’m sure I mentioned it in one review or another, but there are two books that I’d credit with sparking my interest in reading middle grade horror: Daniel Kraus’s THEY THREW US AWAY and Ally Russell’s IT CAME FROM THE TREES.
Something that maybe (maybe?) comes across in my reviews is that, when I get into something, I get INTO it. A lot. So I’ve not only been trying read as much MG horror as possible, I’m also going into “book research” mode, finding different authors, finding different Instagram accounts that highlight middle grade horror, making lists of books to read…I’ll never “catch up” on all the books I’ve missed, but I’m definitely trying to just absorb as much as possible.
And it’s really fun for me to be able to look (briefly) back and see those two books that sort of put me on this path (with a quick shoutout to Clive Barker’s THE THIEF OF ALWAYS, a book I fell in love with probably 20 years ago and have read multiple times since)
So, not only was I greatly anticipating Ally Russell’s MYSTERY JAMES DIGS HER OWN GRAVE, I was able to buy it a little early at the incredible Spooktastic Book Fair in September & get it signed! It was super cool to meet Ally (and a few other authors) & she was really welcoming to me when I was WAY outside my comfort zone at the Fair!
I was talking about “seasonal reading” in my review for BOYS IN THE VALLEY & while I will ultimately always come down on the side of “read what you want, when you want”, MYSTERY JAMES DIGS HER OWN GRAVE was the perfect October read for me, and really helped put me in a Halloween state of mind!
Mystery James was abandoned at the Olde Ellis Town Cemetery as a baby & raised by her adoptive aunt, Tía Lucy. Tía Lucy owns and operates Garcia Graves & Funeral Home on Fox Hollow Lane, in Ellis Town, Pennsylvania.
Having grown up in a funeral home & spending her days doing chores around the cemetery, Mystery is more than comfortable around the dead. She also has a very peculiar supernatural gift: she can smell ghosts.
You get the sense from Mystery almost right away that she’s a little bit chaotic & very driven by curiosity. Mystery is also hilarious, thoughtful, and really, really smart. She’s one of the most instantly likable protagonists I’ve met in awhile & she is so fun to root for.
Mystery & her best friend, Garrett, always seem to find themselves in one pickle or another, and their latest escapade proves to be the scariest of them all: Lady Ellis (of the powerful Ellis family for which the town is named) has recently died, and a precious heirloom necklace that she was interred with has turned up at a local pawn shop.
Owen Ellis, Lady Ellis’s son, accuses Tía Lucy of grave robbing & stealing the necklace. Mystery knows for certain that Tía Lucy is innocent, and it’s up to her to prove it, before they lose the funeral home for good.
The only thing standing between Mystery and the truth is the Baron (a SUPER creepy half-ghost/half-vampire), his graverobbing lackey, Raymond, and well…the entire might of the very influential Ellis family.
Yikes!!
I think one of the most impressive things a storyteller can do is just…fully transport the reader into an environment. Make you feel the cold fall air around you, make you smell the freshly-turned earth in a cemetery. The town comes alive as you read, it becomes a real place right at your fingertips.
What I’m trying to say is that *The Vibes* of MYSTERY JAMES DIGS HER OWN GRAVE are simply off the chart. I feel like this book perfectly exemplifies everything that middle grade horror has come to mean for me. It’s definitely spooky & scary, but there’s a small town quaintness/coziness to the story as well. And there’s a sadness about Mystery, as well. She has so many questions about her origins, her birth mother, her place in the world. Her relationship with Tía Lucy is this beautiful, complex thing. They are unquestionably family. But still…that curiosity about where she comes from is such a driving force for Mystery.
This book & its characters are endlessly charming, and I felt myself disappear into this story every time I picked it up. This is for sure my favorite middle grade horror novel of the year, and also one of my favorite books I’ve read in awhile, period. If there’s one book I hope people might be inspired to pick up after reading one of my reviews, it’s MYSTERY JAMES DIGS HER OWN GRAVE! There’s a title reveal for book two at the end (I won’t spoil it here!), and while I’m not sure how many books are planned for this series, I feel like this story has the bones (pun intended) to go for several books. Either way, I can’t wait to see what’s next from Ally Russell! She’s an incredible storyteller & MYSTERY JAMES DIGS HER OWN GRAVE is an unmissable middle grade horror masterpiece!
Grimdark Dad 