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From the authors of the #1 New York Times bestseller Rhett & Link's Book of Mythicality and creators of Good Mythical Morning, a thrilling and darkly funny novel about two best friends fighting the sinister forces at the heart of their Southern town. It’s 1992 in Bleak Creek, North Carolina—a sleepy little place with all the trappings of an ordinary Southern town: two Baptist churches, friendly smiles coupled with silent judgments, and an unquenchable appetite for pork products. Beneath the town’s cheerful façade, however, Bleak Creek teens live in constant fear of being sent to the Whitewood School, a local reformatory with a history of putting unruly youths back on the straight and narrow—a record so impeccable that almost everyone is willing to ignore the suspicious deaths that have occurred there over the past decade. At first, high school freshmen Rex McClendon and Leif Nelson believe what they’ve been told: that the students’ strange demises were all just tragic accidents, the unfortunate consequence of succumbing to vices like Marlboro Lights and Nirvana. But when the shoot for their low-budget horror masterpiece, PolterDog, goes horribly awry—and their best friend, Alicia Boykins, is sent to Whitewood as punishment—Rex and Leif are forced to question everything they know about their unassuming hometown and its cherished school for delinquents. Eager to rescue their friend, Rex and Leif pair up with recent NYU film school graduate Janine Blitstein to begin piecing together the unsettling truth of the school and its mysterious founder, Wayne Whitewood. What they find will leave them battling an evil beyond their wildest imaginations—one that will shake Bleak Creek to its core.
Publication Year: 2019
I really have to wonder if Rhett and Link ran some of the dialogue, both spoken and inner, by their kids, because it feels genuinely like what kids would say, haha. Like comparing an older lady's oddly spiky hairstyle to Sonic the Hedgehog.
So, and old coworker of mine is a HUGE Rhett & Link fan. She loved this book, and I got it for Christmas in 2021 (from my father, but it was her influence). I read some of it, but that was when I was still heavy in my slump. Excited to try again. The prologue kinda throws you into the middle of... something, and doesn't explain anything. I love this, since it gives you a taste of the action but zero context.