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!