Choose Your Own Adventure Cryptid Chronicles: Mothman

by Cristin Bishara

YOU are a kid with mysteries to solve in the heart of the Appalachian mountains, where a timeless tension between ancient creatures and alien invaders is coming to a head! You’ve heard stories of when the Silver Bridge collapsed into the Ohio River, and sightings of a terrifying figure in the aftermath that led many to blame the Mothman for the tragedy. And now, as another disaster looms, it’s up to you to stop it!

Will the mesmerizing glow of the Mothman's eyes lure you into joining him? Will a secret government agency recruit you to help them save the Earth? Or will you be kidnapped to an alien planet, never to see your home again?

Genres: Adventure

208 pages, Paperback

Published July 22, 2025

About the author

Cristin Bishara writes fantasy and science fiction for kids. Her newly released middle-grade novel, Mothman, is a Choose Your Own Adventure® thriller with 19 endings, and is the first in the Cryptid Chronicles series. Her young-adult debut, Relativity (Bloomsbury, 2013), explores parallel universes, while Vial of Tears (Holiday House, 2021) was inspired by Phoenician mythology and earned starred reviews from both Kirkus and Shelf Awareness. Cristin graduated with a B.A. in English from Kenyon College, and earned her M.F.A. in creative writing (poetry) from St. Mary’s College of California. Over the years, she’s worked as a freelance copywriter, and has taught composition and fiction writing at the university level. She lives and writes in Tampa, Florida with her family and dogs.

Reviews

[Cassian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spoiler: there's no romancing the Mothman option

[Lisa (the_epi_reader) · Rating 4 out of 5]

After seeing this middle grade Mothman Choose Your Own Adventure book, I know I had to buy it. It was a super fun, light, and easy read after a long day. The first path I chose ended rather quickly, leaving me disappointed, but I kept going back to choose different endings. I still have a few more options to try out, but overall it’s a fun book. So far in the Cryptid Chronicles series I’ve only seen Mothman and the Chupacabra, so I hope more are written soon!

P.S. wooing the Mothman is sadly not an option….

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say? I will always love Choose Your Own Adventure books. I am happy to have met the author of this one. I always enjoy having a choice.

[Rebecca Rakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I forgot how often you die in these books. The endings were rougher than I thought! LOL! The story had a lot more aliens than I thought a Mothman book would have, but it was fun.

[Stereo · Rating 4 out of 5]

fun little read!!

[Tea & Gemimah Read Books · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’ve read some questionable "Choose Your Own Adventure" books in my time, but Cristin Bishara’s Mothman is less of a "story" and more of a pile-up.

If you enjoy the feeling of being frustrated and made to cringe, nonstop, by a wall of nonsense, this is the book for you. For everyone else, it’s a masterclass in how not to write.

The "Plot" (If You Can Call It That)
The author clearly decided that instead of picking a theme, she’d just include all of them. It’s a frantic, nonsensical mishmash of ideas that feels like it was written by someone who had eighteen browser tabs open and accidentally hit "merge all." There is zero cohesion. One minute you're investigating a cryptid, the next you're navigating a narrative shift so jarring it gives you actual whiplash.

Speaking of shifts, let’s talk about the protagonist. I’m all for character growth, but our main character undergoes a personality transplant every eight pages. Regardless of which "timeline" you’re in, the MC flips from "brave investigator" to "staring at a wall" with the frequency of a faulty light switch. It’s not a character; it’s a collection of traits thrown into a blender.

The "AI" Of It All
I’m about 90% certain this was "AI-assisted," and by assisted, I mean the author fed a prompt into a bot, went for a long nap, and hit "print" without looking at the screen. The writing is so fundamentally broken and "uncanny valley" that it lacks any semblance of human soul. It reads like a core-level failure of basic prose. Bishara doesn’t just need an editor; she needs a remedial course in how sentences function.

Mothman… or Magic Mike?
Perhaps the most unsettling part—and I use the word "creepy" advisedly—is the author’s bizarre, borderline erotic fascination with Mothman’s physique. I came here for a spooky urban legend, not a play-by-play of a cryptid’s pure muscle 6-pack or whatever weird body-horror-meets-romance-novel descriptions were being jammed down my throat. It’s weird, it’s lingering, and it made me want to wash my eyes out with industrial-strength soap.

Cristin Bishara... Just Stop.
Pick one theme. Maybe two. But for the love of all things literary, stop trying to do everything at once. This is a disjointed, garbage fire of a book that was a genuine chore to get through. It is, without exaggeration, one of the worst CYOA books I have ever had the misfortune of opening.

Bottom line: Save your money. If you want a better adventure to choose, go stare at a flickering streetlamp for an hour; it’ll have more narrative consistency and significantly less creepy bug-man-leering commentary.

[Nick Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over the forty-six years of the CYOA's lifespan across the original run and a couple of relauches, the quality of the books has varied wildly and tended toward the poor end. I'm happy to say that this is one of the absolute best out of the hundreds of entries. The first obvious upside is that Choose Your Own Adventure Cryptid Chronicles colon Mothman (presumably the first in a cryptozoological spinoff series) adheres to the general higher standard for 2020s CYOA books. The writing quality is higher, the plot more intelligent, the page count increased, the amount of text on each page upped, and the paths are written consistently. The second set of assets belong to Mothman specifically are writer Cristin Bishara's obvious familiarity with and love of the lore that she's dealing with - I was not expecting Indrid Cold to appear or see references to John Keel, but they were in there - and the wide variety of interesting path-specific plots involving a missing grandpa, aliens, other dimensions, and time travel (in a way that makes sense, unlike when it's dropped into other CYOA books at random). Mothman is creative, engaging, and treats the source material well, I just wish this was the kind of entry that the series could've been getting from the beginning instead of the scattershot quality that persisted through the original run.

[Caity · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid and I had so much fun with this one. The overall story that is revealed if you're obsessive and must work your way through to every ending like me, is intriguing. I've always enjoyed seeing the different outcomes brought on from small choices this series is known for and I really enjoyed the way the multiple outcomes was worked into this narrative I enjoyed the endings where you got to see more of the Mothman most, but the other elements were really cool too. A very fun book that had me feeling like a kid again.

[Dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an entertaining choose-your-own-adventure story featuring a popular Appalachian cryptid, set in Point Pleasant, WV, the home of the Mothman Museum and the Mothman Festival. Some of the storyline are quite wild and many have a dark ending, but I think it would be popular with middle grade students.

[Allison Maddox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a fun read! My first choose-your-own-adventure. I had a great time with this story and the concept makes for such a cool, interactive experience. I wish more books had such interactive, game-like elements.

[Allison Lienen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this aloud to my class. We are really loving choose your own adventure books. This one is definitely creepy but not scary. I think we found the happiest ending? We weren’t fully satisfied though.

[Dree · Rating 4 out of 5]

I died so much LOL.

[Valerie Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow I am bad at choosing my own adventure

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Jackie Lyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much fun! I grew up reading Choose Your Own Adventures, so this was definitely a throw back! I read it multiple times through exploring different outcomes, and each was humorous and entertaining.

[Heather Gonzales · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super fun!

[Bronn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ended up lost to time because I wore I watch I found.

Amazing. 5 stars.

I love myself some solid nostalgia of a choose your own adventure that's chaotically redonk from beginning to nonsense end.

[Gemimah · Rating 2 out of 5]

not good. lazy story.

[jack torrance .]

Dayummmm its rlly good ngl i am a huge mothman fan and i thought this had history and stuff, i am making a found footage horror film abt mothman

[Miss Cheska · Rating 5 out of 5]

i died multiple times but i had fun doing it LOL