Spooktacular Halloween Read: 'The Collector' by K.R. Alexander

Creepy Dolls and Wicked Witches Lurk In"The Collector"

The Collector. K.R. Alexander’s debut middle grade novel makes no secret that creepy AF dolls are tucked within its pages. I'm TERRIFIED of dolls sooo naturally I picked up this up the instant I saw it. 😏

For the month of October, being the Halloween fanatic, paranormal-obsessed, horror-junkie I am, I have my sights sets on reading as many seasonally spooky middle-grade novels that I can get my greedy, pale, and bony hands on. (Yes, I am the Jack Skellington of hands.)

Having a gig at a library does help to not make me look like a total creeper browsing through the shelves in the children’s library. But even if that wasn’t how I rolled (ya know, literally ROLLING those wheeled trolleys jammed with books I painstakingly organized because I’m tidy and just want you to love me, please love me, across the children’s library) I’d still have my decidedly not under age 12, leggy bodied, squirrel-faced self poking around the children's shelves. I may be in my twenties but I’ll shout it to the stars (and in the faces of patrons) “I LOVE MIDDLE GRADE!!!”

Why? Middle-grade frequently focuses on friendship and has more more diversity in the main and side characters. Middle-grade also often features mental health and illness, learning disabilities, and autistic and differently-abled characters. They normalize nontraditional characters and families and are unafraid to take more creative risks with the stories they tell.

When I read middle grade I try to keep in mind the target audience for the books. How would ten-year-old me react to what goes down? And now how does twenty-something-year-old me relate to it? In my reviews, my M.O. is to blend the two together, like a beautiful mound of freshly whipped up vanilla buttercream frosting. 

That said, let’s crack into it.  

The Collector begins the way many horror stories do: a family of outsiders moves to the middle of nowhere. The parents or guardians simply must move to the sketchiest most obscure town possible and the kids-- tweens, teens, or toddlers are salty about the move. That classic formula is what allows The Collector to take off with a running start.

After losing her job, Josie’s mom has no choice but to pack up her tiny Chicago apartment and take her daughters Josie and Anna with her to their Grandma Jeannie’s house. Miserable about the idea of starting a new school and leaving exciting city life before for the excruciatingly dull sticks of Illinois Josie quickly comes to realize things aren’t quite as innocuous as they seem.

Josie’s mom’s childhood home-- Josie’s and Anna’s new home-- is fenced in by dense woodlands. They’re full of shadows, shrieking, growling, crying and whispering sounds drifting out of it every night. They’re also rumored to hide the house of a witch named Beryl. So begin the sleepless nights. With beasties, boogeymen and witches on the prowl Josie and Anna don’t catch a wink of sleep.

When Anna and Josie deliberately disobey one of Grandma Jeannie’s rules -- no dolls in the house, don’t go in the woods, and never leave windows open at night-- a darkness descends upon the town.

Josie’s bold and talkative new friend Vanessa becomes evasive, Anna constantly brings up her new friend Clara, a girl neither Josie nor Vanessa has ever seen, and middle schoolers begin to go missing. Traipsing through the woods on their way to school or back home becomes a deadly game of chance. A croaky voice whispers Josie’s name every night, and her dreams are filled with malicious dolls chasing her down and a nightmarish house. A house that looks a lot like the one on the forest path that Vanessa and her Aunt Tilda live in…

8, 9, or 10-year-old me would’ve been petrified while reading this book. Especially in the dark. Books like this were what made me keep a nightlight in my bedroom in the first place! I mean that in the BEST way possible. I loved scaring myself then (The Black Cauldron was one of my favourite and go-to movies), and am still scaring myself now. (And The Black Cauldron is still fantastic) Young readers who are proud horror junkies or terrified out of their minds but still LOVE scaring the living daylights out of themselves will race through the pages of The Collector in a matter of days if not a single day.

Josie’s character goes from sulky and skeptical to brave and resourceful. She’s willing to fight for her sister, her best friend, and her grandma even if it means throwing herself into a waking nightmare. She may be only twelve, but she’s no coward.

The Collector is a very small book-- just a little over 200 pages. Alexander’s prose and the voice she gives Josie is zippy and light even with the dark themes that appear. The chapters are short which speeds up the pace even more, and makes The Collector more accessible for young or reluctant readers. The only drawback is that the final act of the novel zooms by so quickly it’s hard to experience the full creepiness of what happens. It’s in this moment that I get the impression Alexander wants to make sure she doesn’t lose her reader’s interest. This and the ending which is bundled up neatly and tied with a bow are one of the few times that the middle-grade “age” of the book shows. 

As a whole, I’m impressed with the direction K.R. Alexander took The Collector in. Swerving away from run of the mill McHorror, Alexander mixes things up with her mystery plot and trusts her readers to follow along. She doesn’t doubt their smarts. It keeps the story from being boxed into the straight-up juvenile kiddie-lit genre. AKA other totally stylish and fun-loving #adulting WIPs can also enjoy this book. And parents who have it all together and speak fluently in a language with words like mortgage.

Alexander promises a scary story, and that’s exactly what she delivers in The Collector.

Parents and guardians need not worry about the intensity. The horror isn’t graphic or offensive and while it is definitely disturbing if the young reader can handle reading R.L. Stein’s Goosebumps books or Neil Gaiman’s Coraline they can handle this.

One of the best things about The Collector is that it’s so much more than just a horror story. The horror is there and it’s a chilling but the novel also really showcases female bonds. It’s deeper than just its scares.

The friendship between Josie and her new friend Vanessa, another city girl and outsider in the small town middle school is the beating heart of the story. Family is also a pulse that keeps the plot pounding along. Josie’s relationship with her little sister Anna, who suffers from night terrors and Grandma Jeannie, who has early onset dementia take up a lot of space. The time Josie spends with them is fraught with emotion but also a quiet kind of love.

Josie’s mom is the only character that doesn’t really get space in the story. She occasionally pipes up, telling her girls they need to be patient and kind with grandma, and that she’s sorry they had to leave Chicago behind. She’s underused but I like how Alexander openly wrote her as a divorced single mother, it’s more common than ever in our 2018 lives but so many books still cling to the picket fence nuclear family, it’s great to see Alexander actively choose to avoid that.

The Collector takes the shadowy house, evil dolls, and wrathful witch in the woods trope and twists it around Twilight Zone style. A spooktacular Halloween pick The Collector is a treat especially for readers ages 8 to 13 but is enough to please readers of all ages.

Recommended. 

Book cover photos from Amazon

Gifs from giphy