Meddling Kids

There seem to be two main camps on Meddling Kids: Those who find this satirical Scooby Doo/Cthulu mash-up deeply profound and those who found it twee, slow paced and with annoying characters.

I was neither – I thought the characters were likable enough and the action was well-paced. I didn't mind the portmanteaus or the spontaneous shifts into stage directions. If anything, I thought that these really highlighted the surrealist mix that Meddling Kids was trying to be and wished that this was a more frequent choice, rather than an occasional slip. Which kind of sums up how I felt about this book overall: I wanted it turned up to eleven. I really wanted Cantero to be fully satirical, referential and really stretch what these extreme genres could do and instead I mostly got Lovecraft, especially by the end of the book. There was a lot of Cthuluoid monsters and survival horror and not much of the Teen Sleuth conceits.

I think that there is something really cool there: as kids, we're scared of everything that goes bump in the night. Teenage skepticism shows that it is all just a Man in a Mask, but maturity shows that there are deeper, more existential horrors than what we'd even previously conceived. But those ideas aren't really explored.

This was so much fun. Take the classic Scooby-Doo cartoon characters, scramble them up a bit and morph them into real-life people (and dog), suppose that they have to confront one case where it's NOT a guy in a mask, but unnameable evil they must fight, and tell that story in a totally self-referential way - this gem is what you will get.

Cantero clearly knows and loves the English language, and thereby earns the right to color outside the lines. (He won me over early, when he correctly used the word “lectern.”) Casual neologisms get cozy with OED chestnuts. Descriptions get downright fanciful, with anthropomorphized hair and chapter intros like “She flung the door open to clamorous nonreaction, silhouetted down to a bulky jacket and a baseball cap, the blue wind blowing away the title card.” During a tense dialog, a portentous question doesn't merely hang in the air, but “levitates” over the diner table. The playful use of language is worth the price of admission all by itself.

But of course the main attraction is the metafictional take on a Saturday-morning cartoon. This is very self-consciously a work about other works, peeking through the fourth wall at you with sudden stage directions or script-style dialog, then inexplicably flowing back into standard third-person narration. Meta silliness would make me laugh out loud, but I got some shivers too. This book will broadly wink at you one moment, then the next moment the winking eye deliquesces into something unspeakable staring from a dead socket.

At times I'd say to myself, “It doesn't make sense for them to do that,” or “This sequence seems a little too goofy,” only to realize that Cantero managed to evoke these reactions as a way to make the reader reflect back on the source material. To be honest, I think he uses this trick to paper over a few weak spots, but it was still fun.

Said weak spots: the pacing is a little off for me (it probably could have been shortened to good effect), and sometimes character motivations are too murky or preposterous to be fully excused by “But that's exactly what the Scooby Gang did!” But these are minor complaints. As a whole, this is both delightful and truly original (by way of putting together lots of familiar elements, from Scooby-Doo to Lovecraft to IT, in a wholly distinctive way).

I'll end by noting that I'd love to see this adapted as anime - in talented hands the sly tone could be conveyed with visual puns and references rather than textual ones, while the horror elements would really hit home! But if that never happens, I'll be satisfied to read it again.

This dark version of Scooby Doo follows four kids and a dog during their summers they spend in a small town resolving cases. until their last one which seems to wreck all of them.
Years later as one of them is dead they decide to come back and find the truth behind all of it.

I enjoyed this book, I liked the vibe and the plot of something deeper hiding behind all this. but this book seemed like it never ended, and I think it comes from the fact that there is no chapter because I was not bored reading it but it felt like I was not moving forward in it. The characters were great with different ways to cope with the trauma, they have their own personality that gives something to the story. It is really mysterious with different aspects of it and plot twists.
The last thing that bothered me was the writing of dialogues that changes from time to time without a reason.

The idea of a grown up Scooby Gang appeals to me. The idea of a grown up Scooby Gang that has serious mental health issues due to the shit they dealt with as they solved some of their crimes is pretty much an exact description of my wheelhouse. While the odd jumps between stylistic choices can be a bit jarring, I still really liked this book from start to finish.

This book flung me around like the kids were flung around that island. The first 200 pages I wasn't really hooked. Then from Part 3 onwards I was hyped, I was starting to really feel the tense, macabre horror creeping out of the hills, yet I found myself struggling again near the end. I won't deny that the premise is genius, Scooby Doo meets Lovecraft (I didn't know how much I needed it). Yet there were too many moments of cringey dialogue and confusing syntax.

I noticed early on that some sentences were wrotelikethisandIdidntunderstandwhy until I sort of came to the conclusion that they weren't deliberate but perhaps editing mistakes. I also found myself struggling to read one part of the fight because one entire page (three paragraphs) were written without a single full stop. Never mind CO2 poisoning, I ran out of oxygen just trying to keep up.

I really wanted to give it four stars but I felt like there could have been more. The relationship between Andy and Kerri also felt very forced, unwanted even, I just wish there had been some moments that had been really revised and engrained better into the novel.

This was a super fun book! Felt like exactly like watching an episode of Scooby-Doo. The writing definitely had a very cartoon vibe, and the plot structure was very reminiscent of one as well. The characters were great, and though some parts were a little cheesy I think that just added to the overall style of the book!

Think Scooby-Doo kids, grown-up, in their mid-twenties, reuniting to revisit a past summer adventure that was really more than what was reported. And they know it. But this is much darker than that because there's some Lovecraftian craziness in this story. Enjoyed this one thoroughly. The characters are all well delineated and fun. There's even a dog, Tim. Also, one of the characters keeps hallucinating a dead friend who used to be part of their gang, the Blyton Summer Detective Club. Lots of humor, and when things start getting weird, lots of action and mayhem too. Wicked fun. Gotta read more by this author.

Meddling kids in it's focus on four teenaged kids and their dog solving mysteries is an obvious throwback to Enid Blyton's Famous Five (the crew refers to themselves as the Blyton Summer Detective Club) and Scooby Doo (as they solve crimes in the Zoinx River Vally of Oregon)

It's been 13 years since they unmasked the Sleepy Lake Monster, revealed as old man Wickley who would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids! Adulthood hangs heavy on the team as the ensuing years have not been kind. It's this damaged crew that reunites to take a closer look at what exactly was going on in their last case.

It's Scooby-Doo meets H.P. Lovecraft and it's just as dark. There's no man in a rubber mask here. Cantero ratchets up the horror elements while keeping you guessing throughout. The writing is a bit wooden and the dialog jumps back and forth from narrative to script format but he drops enough Easter Eggs to keep propelling the narrative forward. Cantero for the most part sticks to the rules of world he creates but occasionally oversteps, and I get it already - Kerri has nice hair. So not high literature but damn good fan fiction with one hell of a cover.