Language: PG (3 swears); Mature Content: G; Violence: PG (skeleton, chased by man with an ax hand, bitten and poisoned by water monster)
BUYING ADVISORY: EL, MS - ADVISABLE
AUDIENCE APPEAL: HIGH
Sixth graders, Brian, Coco and Ollie are trying to make sense of their previous encounters with the Smiling Man. They are studying ghost stories and legends and waiting for the Smiling Man to reappear through the fog. When the kids get an opportunity to have a day on the lake with their parents, they jump at the chance. They quickly realize that the Smiling Man can haunt the water, when their boat starts to sink and they find themselves stranded on an haunted unknown island.
The Small Spaces series is perfect for young readers who like ghost stories and creepy, ominous settings. I highly recommend reading the series in the correct order, so you can better understand the antagonist and the dark foreboding his non-presence creates. Dark Waters is suspenseful and the scary plot points are well paced. The characters are easy to like and work well together as friends. My biggest issue with this book in the series is that the ending feels incomplete, a real frustrating cliff hanger than felt like I only read this book to get to the next one. Brian and his parents are from Jamaica and is described as light brown. The other characters are white.
Reviewer, C. Peterson
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