I was first exposed to Arden's work through her phenomenal Winternight trilogy. Naturally, picking up her middle grade horror novel was a no brainer.

Arden's propensity for atmospheric settings anf descriptive prose lend themselves well to middle grade horror. The story of school children, stranded in the woods during a school field trip is a perfect setting for a Halloween read.

I cannot wait to read the sequel Dead Voices coming out this Fall.

Small Spaces is a creepy and eerie but oh so fun fantasy middle grade novel that I adored to pieces. I was expecting it to be a quick and easy read,which it was,but it also had deeper themes in it, such as depression, grief, bullying. The main character is book lover which is relatable) But she was also smart and brave yet down to earth. The friendship in this book was so cute and I can't wait to see more of it in book two. Also, the villain and the scarecrows- totally creepy!
Thank you to netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

This is the most spookiest Middle Grade book I've ever read. But the story and characters were so good that I couldn't out it down or stop reading it. Thank you to the publishers for sending me an arc and I will definitely be reading more of Katherine Arden's books! Like read soon. I don't think I have anything negative to say about this book. The story moved pretty good and there weren't any slow parts and characters did learn from things so I give this a 5/5 stars. Yes I loved it.

Katherine Arden arrived into my reading world with her first novel The Bear and the Nightingale, one of my favorite debuts in years. It was the first volume of a trilogy set in medieval Russia that dealt with the collision between folklore and religion, between past and present, between men and women, and between magic and faith. And it did so in one of the lushest, richest worlds I can remember. So I was going to read anything else she wrote, simply based off of that. Of course, who would have expected that her next book would be a middle-grade ghost story?

But of course Small Spaces is great – what else would I have expected from Arden? And if the story is simple in many ways – a necessity of the genre – that doesn’t keep Arden from working within its confines to make something that still feels inventive and rich somehow, with characters just as lively and thoughtful as her adult works.

That richness is evident early on, as Arden introduces us to our protagonist, an eleven-year-old girl named Ollie, who’s still recovering from a painful loss and is pushing away everyone around her in the process. That feels like a familiar trope, but Arden makes Ollie her own character, with a love of numbers and reading that both set her apart, as well as an endearing prickliness that’s both amusing and plausible. But Arden’s not content to just give us a great heroine, and starts carefully fleshing out the supporting cast, turning what we thought might be a generic bully character into something far more interesting, the token “new girl” into her own wonderful little person, and Ollie’s dad into a man we can see existing outside of Ollie’s world. That Arden does all of that while never veering off of her story or spending excess time on it is all the more testament to her skills and care as a writer.

Of course, if you’re making a middle grade horror novel, the important thing your target audience cares about isn’t the characters – it’s the scares. And Small Spaces delivers those nicely, giving even this adult reader some serious creeps while never steering out of the age-appropriate range. The story seems simple enough, with a school bus breaking down in the middle of a deep fog and the sudden appearance of a distressingly large number of scarecrows, but Arden has a lot going on there – more than it seems at first – keeping the plot moving at a rapid pace while escalating the scares in satisfying ways. (Seriously, these are some creepy scarecrows, you guys.)

Small Spaces feels a little rushed and tidy at the end – maybe a bit necessitated by the genre, but it still feels like a weak ending to an otherwise great story. But it’s not so weak that it ruins the book as a whole, and the book’s many other pleasures – great characters, emotional richness, great pacing, and eerie mood – are more than enough to leave you satisfied with the read you got. Knowing that she’s already got another story set in this world to come? That’s just icing on the cake.

ARC kindly provided by Netgalley and publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed below are purely my own.

Rating: 4.5/5

I really enjoyed the journey the author created for Olivia (the MC) in this book. The plot tied in nicely, moving from a long-lost story to the present, where both worlds are fated to collide. Olivia is a 6th grader who recently lost her mother and is struggling with her emotions. She has withdrawn herself into the books that she reads and so when she comes across a woman crying hysterically by a lake, about to toss a book into the adjoining river, Olivia steals the book from her. She races away from the woman only to hear the words: stick to small spaces at night, stay away from large ones. In the book Olivia retrieves from said woman, she learns about the cursed past of a family in a farm. A husband had to make a promise to the "smiling man" to get his lost brother back. In the real world, Olivia's class visits a neighboring farm with a sinister history of its own. At first, she ignores the connections she sees between both, until she can no longer ignore the eerie, creeping mists, the increasing amount of scarecrows around the farm, or the fact that her school bus breaks down in the most inopportune of places. Will she put together the clues fast enough to make it out alive?

School children will love this book- I book talked it during this summer's SRA and every time I was met with silence, children eating up every single word! I can now say that most of the county's titles are either checked out or on hold!

I read Katherine Arden’s award-winning The Bear and the Nightingale earlier this year and loved it, so when I learned that she has also written a middle-grade ghost story I hoped it would be just as good and immediately added it to my list of Halloween reads. I wasn’t disappointed.

Small Spaces is about an eleven-year-old bookworm named Ollie who is living with depression and grief after the loss of her mother. All Ollie wants to do is hide away and read instead of dealing with school and other kids, so when she goes down to read at the creek after school and finds a seemingly mad woman about to throw a book away into the water, she snatches it and takes it home. In its pages, she finds a 100-year-old memoir written by a woman whose husband and brother-in-law made a deal with The Smiling Man and vanished from their farm. On a school trip to a local farm the very next day, Ollie discovers more and more similarities between the book and the farm, and she begins to wonder if she and her classmates might become the next chapter.

This is an amazingly atmospheric book. Katherine Arden paints the ominous landscape of Misty Valley Farm so perfectly that you can imagine yourself there, and The Smiling Man and his legion of followers are creepy enough to haunt your thoughts for weeks after reading – and make you suspicious of any scarecrows you might see. I did find myself wishing for a few more details, however. What was the bargain surrounding the first class of children who disappeared and what really happened to Caleb when he vanished? I also hope we one day get a sequel, perhaps when Ollie has grown up, as the ending suggests there is much more to come from these characters.

This was my first middle grade book and it was so good ya’ll! Katherine Arden did a great job one with this one. It was easily spooky and grabbed my attention.

Our story starts with our main character Ollie stopping a woman from throwing a book in the water. She warns her to stick to the small spaces but Ollie isn’t sure what she’s talking about. She starts to read this book only to find out that things in the book may be truer than she realizes.

Ollie was grieving over losing her mother. She engrossed herself in books and dropped out of her school activities. Along the way, she starts to work her way through the grief and actually learn to let people again. I really did enjoy the friendship that formed between Ollie, Brian, and Coco.

The best part about this book was the atmosphere! It just felt like autumn and it did have that spooky vibe.
This was pretty darn spooky book even though it’s middle grade. It could just be that I’m a scaredy cat, but I found myself reading with my bedside lamp on! There were twists that I didn’t see coming, especially towards the end!

This book was a fun read that I recommend everyone read! It will definitely give you those fall vibes. Grab a PSL and enjoy!