Dead Flip

Sara Farizan — 2022

Edge-of-your-seat YA horror perfect for fans of Stranger Things Growing up, Cori, Maz, and Sam were inseparable best friends, sharing their love for Halloween, arcade games, and one another. Now it’s 1992, Sam has been missing for five years, and Cori and Maz aren’t speaking anymore. How could they be, when Cori is sure Sam is dead and Maz thinks he may have been kidnapped by a supernatural pinball machine? These days, all Maz wants to do is party, buy CDs at Sam Goody, and run away from his past. Meanwhile, Cori is a homecoming queen, hiding her abiding love of horror movies and her queer self under the bubblegum veneer of a high school queen bee. But when Sam returns—still twelve years old while his best friends are now seventeen—Maz and Cori are thrown back together to solve the mystery of what really happened to Sam the night he went missing. Beneath the surface of that mystery lurk secrets the friends never told one another, then and now. And Sam’s is the darkest of all . . . Award-winning author of If You Could Be Mine and Here to Stay Sara Farizan delivers edge-of-your-seat terror as well as her trademark referential humor, witty narration, and insightful characters.

Reviews

Genesis (@whisperingchapters)@whisperingchapters

Aug 26, 2022

Three inseparable friends in the late 80s discover a pinball machine that could possibly have something sinister they aren’t aware of. One night, Sam disappears, leaving no trace behind. It’s now 1991, 5 years later, and Cori and Maz have carried on with their lives, still remembering their long lost friend. Suddenly, Sam is back, looking the exact same way as when he disappeared, and even acting the same. Unfortunately, with Sam’s arrival, people start turning up frozen. Could it be Sam or something else at play?

The plot was super intriguing to me, as were the characters. Unfortunately, for the first half of the book, not much happens, even when Sam is back. It wasn’t until over the halfway mark that things start picking up and send the reader into a labyrinth of what the heck is happening. While horror, it wasn’t scary at all; it definitely reads more for Middle Grade.

I did love the inclusion of having two sapphic characters, especially with how this story is set in the early 90s. I have to say I was more interested in them than the rest of the story.

Once more people started getting involved in what was happening, I ended up enjoying the ride and eager to figure out the mystery of it all.

For those who grew up in the late 80s, early 90s, you’ll like all the little odes to these years.