It’s summertime, and 13-year-old Aidan Cross is looking forward to lots of fun with his closest friends: handsome athlete Kai, class clown Zephyr and studious Terrance. They’ll ride bikes, go swimming, play D&D and watch movies. And they’ll engage in the group’s favorite pastime, “yeeting crap at the Witch House,” a tumbledown Victorian mansion with “broken and shattered windows . . . like hungry mouths with glass teeth.”
Aidan has something specific in mind for the yeeting session at the beginning of Preston Norton’s The House on Yeet Street. In addition to sticks and stones, he’ll yeet his notebook into the Witch House, where it’ll be safe from prying eyes. “The inside of this notebook was the one place Aidan was allowed to be himself. It was nice to invent a version of him that did and said the things he was afraid to say and do”—like confessing his romantic feelings for Kai.
But the thrill of a successful yeet turns appallingly sour when his friends announce an impending Witch House sleepover. Aidan is desperate to grab his notebook before someone else does, and he sort of succeeds: His friends don’t find it, but a ghost does. She’s Gabby Caldwell, a teenaged girl who was found dead in the mansion 20 years ago and has been stuck inside since. Gabby wants Aidan to find out what happened to her so she can escape the house. She also wants him to continue the story he’s been writing in his notebook (his first positive review!).
Aidan and friends spring into action, investigating Gabby’s demise and delving into the Witch House’s disturbing past. They encounter landmines galore, including a terrifying specter stalking them around town, a mean girl stealing and posting Aidan’s notebook online and extreme parental exasperation. Can the group make sense of the supernatural goings-on before the house claims another victim?
Norton, author of Hopepunk (one of BookPage’s Best YA Books of 2022), has crafted an action-packed, compelling coming-of-age tale about coming out and becoming brave, all wrapped up in a supremely creepy horror story rife with ghosts and legend, hilarious dialogue and daring adventures. It’s scary, sometimes sweet, rollicking good fun.