Happy Town

August 15, 2024
Consumerism turns terrifying in a creepy company town. Newly transplanted Keegan has just settled into his new home in the seemingly utopian and cloyingly named Happy Town with his mom and his stepdad, Carl. Enclosed beneath a climate-controlled dome and devoid of birds or bugs, Happy Town life is dictated by corporate magnate Arlo Corn, who brands everything with jargon (buses are known as "conveyors," and detention is called Mandatory Saturday Work Opportunity). All adults in Happy Town receive tiny cranial implants known colloquially as "imps," giving Corn an all-access pass into their subconscious (kids are thankfully spared this invasion of privacy). Commercials constantly stream as imp-embedded grown-ups fritter from one corporately decreed trend to the next--musical instruments one day and hats the next--all deducted from any pay they earn. Keegan and new friends Gloriana (who has an appetite for destruction) and Tank (a romance novel devotee) know that things aren't quite right in Happy Town, but when the adults all develop an insatiable craving for meat, things take a dark turn. Van Eekhout's satirical romp is a wonderfully silly and gross page-turner, sure to resonate with Goosebumps fans. Populated with cryogenic heads, meat-crazed zombies, and adorable animal toys that provide electric shocks, this tale will delight genre fans with its skillfully wrought intersection of social commentary and horror. Physical descriptions are minimal. By turns thrilling and thought-provoking.(Horror. 8-12)

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 15, 2024
Grades 4-7 In this genre-busting creepfest, hardly has Keegan arrived with his parents in the supposed utopia built by mega-billionaire Arlo Corn, owner of a mammoth online shopping site, than he's forcibly spending his Saturdays breaking down boxes at the domed town's immense Fulfillment Center. Things go from bad to worse when the nonremovable implants that adult residents must accept suffer a glitch that turns everyone into shopaholic zombies slavering for Cramwiches, "the Microwaveable Meat Sandwich Crammed with Meat." And when those run out, they'll take any sort of fresh meat--preferably, live kid. Fortunately, Keegan finds allies in adrenaline junkie Gloriana, outsize classmate Tank, and other young survivors, just in time to head off the crisis without having to dish out any serious harm on their drooling parents. Unfortunately, the sociopathic Corn has a fiendish (and probably sequel-signaling) surprise to spring just as things are settling down. Van Eekhout delivers a winner here for readers who enjoy sinking their teeth into a zombie apocalypse low on explicit gore but well seasoned with satiric tweaks and twists.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2025
Narrator Keegan thinks his family's recent move to a box-shaped house in Happy Town is just another in a string of relocations. Located in the Nevada desert, Happy Town is, according to Keegan, "the biggest online shop in the world." His new home just seems weird, with its driverless "conveyor" that carries kids to Happy Academy and its fleet of advertising blimps. But things turn dark very quickly. First he learns that Happy Town owns the rights to all his schoolwork; then he must take part in a Mandatory Saturday Work Opportunity (they don't call it detention); then he arrives home to find that his parents -- along with all the other adults -- have purchased marching-band instruments in response to an ad. Something's up with the implants all Happy Town adults have installed in their heads, Keegan and his friends reason, and it's up to the kids to save them all from becoming "band-instrument-hoarding...and-possibly-cannibalistic zombies." This is the broadest of satires, and van Eekhout leaves nothing up to chance in the delivery of his message: "If you can control what people want, you can control what they think [and] what they do." But if it's unsubtle, it's also funny, and readers will relish every outlandish detail as much as van Eekhout clearly does. Vicky Smith

(Copyright 2025 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)