Abandoned by Booklikes

This was a short read. I honestly don't mind worms, especially after it rains. However, this book is going to have me avoid the buggers for a while.

Pre-teen Todd is obsessed with worms. He has a worm house in his basement and when it rains he digs for worms along with his only friend Danny. After Todd (who is a jerk) goes around torturing his sister by throwing worms on her and putting them in her food. After a disastrous science fair, Todd starts to think the worms are turning on him after he maliciously cuts one in half and notices the other worms staring at him.

Todd sucked. I actually was pretty happy with the ending, because the kid was dancing near almost a psychopath. I'm still wondering how his parents didn't slap the mess out of him. I really felt for his sister Regina who kept having to deal with his "pranks" and him getting away with things. When Todd started to unravel it seemed like he was going to learn his lesson, but not so much.

When Todd tries to solve hr mystery of why worms are appearing all around him you start to feel a bit sorry for him, but of course that gets negated because he is seriously a jerk.

I thought the writing was okay. An easy book for a kid to read (I say age 9 and up) since I didn't think it was that scary. I'm grading this on a kid scale so am not going to jump too hard on Stine for the super quick and random ending. Also the ending reminded me of a book I read as a kid where a collector had the tables turned on him as well.

The flow was meh. Probably because the book focuses on the science fair competition and it made it out to be this big thing and it kind of fizzled in the end. Also once again Todd gets away with something that I'm surprised didn't get him grounded.

The setting of Ohio I recall intrigued me as a kid, because it felt so far away to me. This was around the same time when Eerie, Indiana was on and that show scared the life out of me so Goosebumps and that show were good companions.