Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson [Book Review]
Summary
“Growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls – a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place – Jake Baker spends most of his time with his uncle Calvin, a kind but eccentric enthusiast of occult artifacts and conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turns twelve, he befriends a pair of siblings new to town, and so Calvin decides to initiate them all into the “Saturday Night Ghost Club.” But as the summer goes on, what begins as a seemingly light-hearted project may ultimately uncover more than any of its members had imagined. With the alternating warmth and sadness of the best coming-of-age stories, The Saturday Night Ghost Club is a note-perfect novel that poignantly examines the haunting mutability of memory and storytelling, as well as the experiences that form the people we become, and establishes Craig Davidson as a remarkable literary talent.”
-From Amazon.com
Review
I absolutely picked up this book from impulse while wandering around my library. Initially I thought it was going to be a completely different kind of book, based on the title. The title indicated it would be more ghosty and so I thought it was going to be a spooky-ish read, but while it had some vibes of that, that was really not the message of the book. But wow, was it good.
The story essentially followed these children and their Uncle through ghost stories and visiting all these strange ‘haunted’ locations in the town. It was about halfway through, closer to three quarters, that I started to realize there was more here than I realized. Some things that the Uncle was saying, and how the author described his reactions, indicated there was something more. I’m not going to spoil it at all, but I was not ready for the ultimate message.
The ultimate message was that some ghosts are kind of good and fears as a child are absolutely not the same as fears as an adult. The ending absolutely had me in tears. Big time.
Because it is one of those books that you have to read it to get it, I can’t really spoil much about the story itself. However, the writing was simple. It was just over 200 pages and I sat down and read it in about 2.5 hours one afternoon sitting outside. It was a wonderful little atmospheric read, giving Stranger Things vibes to the town, the main characters and the time period. While the writing style, and character development, wasn’t massive or anything to write home about, the story is what had the book be really entertaining. It was kind of a curveball at the end I didn’t entirely see coming and it was incredibly emotional, at least to me.
This would be a great beach read or a palette cleanser book – something short, easy to digest and get through in a timely manner.
I would give this a solid 5/5 for the message and maybe a 4/5 for the writing style and such. But I do recommend it!
Happy Reading!
