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I probably think about blurbs more than the average reader. Or at least, I’m keenly aware that they WORK on me. A lot. There’s just always something about a glowing blurb from an author I like that gets me super excited for a book. I also think it helps me “stay in my lane” to a point, if that makes sense. Like, I just saw a thriller that caught my eye, checked the blurbs for it, and the first one was from…Jimmy Fallon? So that doesn’t necessarily rocket the book to the top of my TBR the way it would coming from an author whose work I love. 

I was just starting to take an interest in middle grade horror when Stephen King posted *that* blurb to social media: “BROKEN DOLLS, Ally Malinenko: Not coming until the fall, but I can’t help telling you how good it is. Middle-grade horror, sure, but it does the job. Scary dolls that multiply…a sinister magician…and an understated but moving subtext about how young people deal with grief. Put it on your list.”

Now, ignoring the “Middle-grade horror, sure, but it does the job” part that feels like some weird type of caveat, I imagine getting a blurb like this is every horror author’s dream. While he’s not without his faults, Stephen King is synonymous with the genre & I bet his name on the cover is a huge boost for any book. 

I love a book that totally subverts your expectations & BROKEN DOLLS did that for me cover to cover. I mean, yes, of course. There are creepy dolls. And they are SO VERY CREEPY. And there are SO VERY MANY. But this book is such a thoughtful, tender, and gut-wrenching examination of grief, and it absolutely shattered me. It’s so lovely & sweet as well, but with BROKEN DOLLS, Malinenko is totally unflinching in her portrait of a grieving kid. Oof, I may never emotionally recover from this book, and can say for sure this is one of the best middle grade horror novels I’ve ever read. 

Kaye Prescott is mourning the loss of her grandfather. Grampa’s death has hit Kaye so hard that she’s developed selective mutism as well as arithmomania, where she obsessively counts things. 

Towards the end of his life, Kaye’s grandfather was living with Kaye, her Mom, and her younger sister, Holly, in their home in Brooklyn. But now they are all going to spend the summer cleaning out Grandpa’s old house, currently occupied by Kaye’s Uncle Stan and his boyfriend, David. It’s supposed to be a fun, productive summer, but Kaye is not feeling it. She immediately misses her home in Brooklyn & is totally consumed with grief. 

A night out at a carnival (actually it’s a Cheese Festival!) leads Kaye & Holly into a chance encounter with a strange magician of sorts. Which is how Holly comes to possess a creepy-looking doll called “Holly-doll.”

From there Holly becomes mostly preoccupied with the doll. Transfixed, almost. And she keeps “finding” other creepy dolls in & around Grandpa’s house, insisting that Holly-doll is telling her where to find these dolls. 

Kaye knows something is up. Something is very wrong with Holly. But between her difficulty speaking up (though Kaye can & does speak plenty in this book), and all the grownups around her insisting that Holly is just being a kid, well…Kaye feels pretty helpless. 

Fortunately she meets a local girl named Joey. Joey is a baseball fanatic (relatable!), is really cool & laid back, and Kaye definitely gets a big crush on her. Their friendship is so fun & Joey becomes instrumental in Kaye trying to solve the mystery of these creepy dolls that seem to be taking over her summer. 

That’s the setup for BROKEN DOLLS in a nutshell, but if I haven’t made it clear, this book is about so much more than just kids getting chased around by creepy dolls. 

I think Kaye is probably the most complex protagonist I’ve met in a middle grade horror novel & I loved her so much. Her’s is really one of the most brutal portrayals of grief that I’ve read. Kaye is constantly grappling with the feeling that she’s grieving too much, or grieving the wrong way. She looks around at her Mom & her uncle and sees them getting by. Seemingly. She’s baffled, because to her it’s like…everything stopped when Grampa died. She doesn’t feel like she can or should enjoy any part of her life now that he’s gone. She’s just carrying so much pain & it’s of course manifested in some disruptive ways. 

As someone who has lost a lot of family members, I was so moved by this book. Grief can feel so overwhelming at times, and it can hit you in really unexpected ways. I think Ally Malinenko captured this so beautifully with Kaye. 

Also Kaye’s struggle with arithmomania was really interesting for me to read about, as I think I struggled (and still occasionally struggle) with at least some form of this. It’s not something I’ve ever really talked about with anyone, but sometime in my mid-twenties I began tapping out syllables on my fingers, almost constantly. Things I said, things other people said, things I thought. I was always tapping my fingers to my thumb; pointer, middle, ring, pinky, ring, middle, pointer. Repeat. 

I chalked it up to being a drummer. Just another version of me always tapping a drum beat on the steering wheel of my car or something. I definitely think a part of me recognized that it was a behavior I had lost control of, but I never examined it much further. It still happens to me sometimes, but not with the same frequency that it used to. It was just interesting to me to put a name to it & to see it represented in a middle grade horror novel. 

I don’t have enough good words for BROKEN DOLLS & for Ally Malinenko’s writing. This book was so heartfelt & honest, as well as suuuuper creepy and fun. Just a completely perfect middle grade horror novel, one of the best I’ve read yet. So excited to check out Ally Malinenko’s two previous books, GHOST GIRL and THIS APPEARING HOUSE