Representations: https://trello.com/c/mW8i0skQ/144-deephaven-mystery-1-deephaven-by-ethan-m-aldridge

Went into this thinking it wouldn't really be that much horror and just something lightly spooky maybe since it is middle grade, turns out I was massively wrong lmao.

I absolutely adored this. The gothic horror, the descriptions, the beautiful illustrations, the fascinating world building and school!! Everything was just so interesting and kept me wanting to know more about every little thing. The school and how it all worked I really wish we got to see more of, it's so weird in a cool way. I would love to see more lessons and what gets taught there.

Characters were so charming, there was a good amount of them and they all shined pretty nicely as the book progressed. They were all quite unique to each other and played off of each other very interestingly (especially Patience and Thaddius). Nev was an interesting main character, though despite I believe they were wanting to be more comfortable as a non-binary person when going to the school and that was part of the point of them going, they didn't really seem to make a point about asking people to call them Nev (just sorta offhandedly mentioning it in introductions as a nickname) or mentioning pronouns even once. Thus like I couldn't really tell if characters calling them by their full name was like, a slight against Nev or something or just people not knowing.

There was only 1 odd thing about Nev and that was them being a kleptomaniac. But stealing things to repurpose and find a use for. It was cool to see their mechanical brain work, but there was not really any pushback against them stealing so much, and so often, except for one or 2 moments. In fact, it was constantly seen as a good thing. I saw mentions that we kinda do the same thing in video games - steal and horde random items in hope they are useful later - but at least the majority of the time the games do have mechanics that say stealing is bad. Fines, arrests, combat, etc. And most of the time those items are not useful - no you do not need 500 wheels of cheese!

Tension and action for the horror were really well done as well. I absolutely loved the monster, I loved all the systems around that and the mysteries. Each scene in the east wing absolutely had me on edge wondering what was going to happen next!! The art was absolutely gorgeous and really helped set the scene and tension wonderfully.