[Snack-Size Review] Sour Candy, by Kealan Patrick Burke

Quick Bite: I feel like I just took an acid trip through hell, in the best way.

What It’s About: We’ve all been in the store when That One Kid starts screaming his head off. Most of us just try to quickly finish our business and get away. Phil Pendleton is on just such a mission, just trying to buy some chocolate for his girlfriend when the kid starts. But then he’s in a car accident, and the kid is suddenly his son, and his girlfriend is gone and then things get REALLY crazy.

A Word From The Nerd: My beloved Nerdlings, this story messed with my poor frazzled brain so hard. It’s a brilliant, hallucinogenic nightmare in a bright candy coating. 

The Nerd’s Rating: Five Happy Neurons (and some chocolate. Lori was right.)

[Snack-Size Review] The House On Abigail Lane, by Kealan Patrick Burke

Quick Bite: Dude. A crazy amount of creepy in a petite package.

What It’s About: Built in 1956, the house at 56 Abigail Lane has a strange habit of making people who enter it disappear. But the vanishings are just the tip of the iceberg of strangeness.

A Word From The Nerd: This book is only 68 pages long, but it has some of the most effective scares I’ve come across, and that’s saying something. At first I had a hard time with the hyperfast parade of new characters, so many of them are “on-screen” for a short time, and then there’s a whole other list of references with more names – having more content, more development would’ve made them easier to keep straight.. But in the end, I realized that the house is the only character that really matters, and if my complaint about the book is that there isn’t enough of it, well, that’s actually a compliment, right?

The Nerd’s Rating: FIVE HAPPY NEURONS (and some sunflower seeds.)