Eighth Grade Witch

Choose Your Own Nightmare

by C.E. Simpson, Gabhor Utomo (Illustrator)

A move to a creepy Brooklyn brownstone adds tumult to your eighth grade year. The fact your parents are professional Demonologists doesn't help. Strange neighbors report that your house was abandoned because it's haunted. Evil and spooky coincidences follow you from your new home to your new school. Are you the victim of "new girl" pranks, or is your house a creepy portal through time?

Genres: Horror, Choose Your Own Adventure, Gamebooks

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2014

Reviews

[Wil Wheaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book in the Choose Your Own Nightmare series that I read, and it was a lot of fun. We hit three different endings, and all of them were suitably dark, without being too gruesome for a YA audience.

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not survive this book in any of the 7 times I tried.

[Raven · Rating 5 out of 5]

My sons gave me a few Choose Your Own Adventure books for my birthday. I really liked this one! And they enjoyed me reading it to them.

[Nick Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

In contrast to the prior iteration of the Choose Your Own Nightmare series, the relaunch sports 50% more pages, far more choices, smaller fonts, and has more text with less white space, meaning that there is significantly more content in every book. The books are also written for an older audience (the old CYON almost seemed to be aimed at a younger set than even the core CYOA books) and are much more willing to have actual spooky things happen (in this book a character eats his way out of a giant spider nest and his guts are then devoured by spiders that stream out of him, as an example). As a result of all that, this is far and away better than anything in the original series by default. The prose is also fairly well written and the illustrations are very good.

However, the plot is messy and suffers from inconsistency across paths. There's little rhyme or reason to where a choice will lead you, often resulting in a gristly death from some random event that has no foreshadowing. Heading into the most easily-accessed path - which the two other chains will shoot you back onto at points - traps you in a very long cul du sac with five bad endings and zero good ones without the slightest warning, justification, or chance to escape. The central premise is underused and the point of view character does almost no witchcraft, including a total lack of "your" becoming an evil witch bad endings that there should've been at least one of.

It's better than the same author's later Brooklyn Mermaid and the graphic novel adaption of this book, at least.

[Valen · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.75 stars

Bastante decepcionante si soy sincera.

Me encanta este tipo de narración en la que no tenes manera de saber a donde va a ir la historia. Pero para tener entre casi 30 finales para elegir (morís en la mayoría) es un embole.

Muchas de las elecciones que dan solo las elegiría un tarado. Y todo bien, está escrito para niños, pero yo esperaría que mi hermana de 9 años no sería tan idiota como para ponerse una máscara antigua y ser comida por lagartos.

La opción donde anónimamente terminas con un ring de roba tumbas y vendedores de órganos estuvo bueno igual, ngl 😂

Me frustra también un poco el hecho que la Prudencia aparece cuando se le canta el culo. Hay más fantasmas y zombis que brujas en este libro. Muy mal marketing.

Los errores de edición creo que son la peor parte de este libro. Hasta un iletrado se rascaría la cabeza viendo como llaman Peter y Pedro a un personaje en una misma página. Hermano, elegí un idioma. Es Prudence o Prudencia? Decidite.

En conclusión, para ser llamado “la mansión de las brujas”, hay muy pocas brujas. The fuck?

[KB · Rating 2 out of 5]

it had a good base storyline but like another review said the choices for the adventure were hard to follow & at times confusing.