Review – Dead Flip by Sara Farizan

I received this book for free from the publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Dead Flip by Sara Farizan
Published by Algonquin Young Readers on August 30, 2022
Genres: Young Adult Fiction / Horror
Pages: 272
Format: Hardcover
Source: Publisher
Goodreads
Amazon | Audible | B&N | Kobo | Libro.fm

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.
 

I had fun with this book! I’ve seen this book described as Stranger Things meets Jumanji and I think that totally fits (although I have to admit that I have only watched a few episodes of Stranger Things). This book is set in the late ’80s and early ’90s which just happens to coincide with my teen years so I really enjoyed the nostalgia of the book. There was just enough strangeness to the story to keep me glued to the pages.

Cori, Maz, and Sam were best friends in middle school. As they are getting older, Cori is feeling some pressure to start spending time with other girls and Sam’s immaturity can sometimes be embarrassing to the other two. When they go trick or treating one last time, Sam storms away mad and is not seen again. Fast forward five years and Cori and Maz are no longer friends but everything changes when Sam returns. Sam’s back but he is still a 12-year-old boy and his friends are 17. They need to figure out what really happened to Sam and come up with a plan regarding what they should do now that he is back.

I loved the sense of unknown in this book. The things happening with Sam were strange and I couldn’t wait to find out what was really happening. This was also a great story about growing up. Maz and Cori changed a lot after their friend disappeared. The people in their lives have expected them to behave in certain ways and they have both done their best to live up to those expectations. I really liked seeing them reconnect with each other.

I would recommend this book to others. I found this book to be incredibly entertaining and ended up reading it in a single day simply because I didn’t want to put it down. I may have sworn off pinball because of this book but I wouldn’t hesitate to read more of this author’s work in the future.

I received a review copy of this book from Algonquin Young Readers.

Related Posts