Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group for this DRC.
Another winner in the Small Spaces Quartet. This time they are fighting the smiling man on Lake Champlain in Vermont. Wonderful story!
#DarkWaters #NetGalley

Dark Waters was a dive into the deep, dark, spooky world of middle-grade novels. Katherin Arden is a master of the craft. Students keep checking this book out of the library and I cannot reshelve this book fast enough!

The Small Spaces series is amazing! The first book in the series is Small Spaces and I would recommend reading it and book two, which is Dead Voices, before reading Dark Waters (2021) and Empty Smiles (2022). I would caution that these books are on the spooky/scary side so please don't read these in the dark and avoid them if you can't handle scary stories. I would recommend these books to any readers who can handle anything scary.

Katherine Arden has a great way of crafting a scary story. This series is one that doesn't tire or bore the reader because she changes the setting and makes things surprising along the way. Since I began reading the series, I can honestly say I will be adding these books to my school library.

Dark Waters follows friends Ollie, Brian, and Coco as they continue being followed by the smiling man. What makes this book different from her other ones? They are trying to survive in open waters! Read this thrilling installment to see what happens to our characters.

A great creature feature starring the characters of Katherine Arden's Small Spaces series. I'm glad to see this series still going with a good amount of steam!

Dark Waters by Katherine Arden; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 256 pages ($16.99) Ages 10 and up. (Aug. 3 publication)


In the third installment of her smart, scary horror series for kids (after "Small Spaces" and "Dead Voices"), Katherine Arden amps up the spooky suspense – only to end with a cliffhanger that leaves the reader breathlessly awaiting the next installment.

The novel opens with the three friends, Brian, Olivia and Coco, on their own in Mountain Lodge in the Green Mountains during a rainstorm while Brian's parents are out to dinner. (The same lodge, owned by Brian's parents, was the setting, during a blizzard, for "Dead Voices.") The three sixth graders are on edge, fearing the return of the Scarecrow man, when someone leaves a round black piece of paper with writing on it at the front door. To protect their parents, the kids have not shared with them the truth about the threats they have faced, and Arden paints a credible portrait of smart, good kids struggling on their own to be brave and do the right thing.

Coco's mom, a newspaper reporter, invites the three friends plus Olivia's dad on a sailboat excursion on Lake Champlain while she interviews the operator of "Champ Tours," focusing on sightings of the Vermont version of the Loch Ness monster. Describing the creepy setting where all the action takes place with cinematic detail, Arden piles on the terror, weaving in Lake Champlain history and pirate lore.

Jean Westmoore

This is the third book in her Small Spaces series, and while I still enjoyed it and the characters continued to grow, this was as engaging or spooky as the first two. The kids and adults set out to search for the legendary sea monster and end up stranded on a strange island. The Smiling Man is still around, but he isn't as prominent as the first two, so the under current of fear isn't there. I'm glad that the series is going to continue, and I love these characters, so I look forward to the next one.

A great scary book for middle grade readers. Kids looking for something that will send chills down their spine will love Katherine Arden's books. Shades of Jaws with a creepy supernatural twist, I will recommend this to any kid who loves plenty of terror in their books.

This book just did not wow me. I felt like this book was more of connecting book to the end of the series. I feel like this book was also very short and that sort of lead to the shortness of this novel and how i struggled to feel connected to these characters. The narrator also changed in this read and the plot felt a bit off!! but i am excited to read the last book in the series!

I am loving this series! Each one gets better and I love that they have added a member to their trio. The end of this book left us on a cliffhanger, but it was one that I didn't mind. I can't wait to continue on. August isn't that far away.....

A creepy third installment in the series. In Dark Waters the story is told through Brian's POV and it is a nail biter all the way through. The friends believe the are out for a sailing trip so Coco's mother can gather material for a story on the "lake monster" but what if the monster isn't just a story? And is the smiling man behind the strange trip?

This book is a lot more intense than the first two books. There is less build-up to the main conflict and the story ends on a major cliff-hanger. A cliff-hanger so tense, that I was convinced that the arc I read was incomplete :)

I am impressed by Arden's ability to keep the reader's interest and intrigue with this third installment. Often-times series begin to lose steam by the second book. Arden has well-developed and defined characters and the story arc makes sense, while still keeping the readers guessing.

I am excited to see how this series ends and I know this will be a go to horror series for the middle grade readers who are looking for spooky/creepy/scary stories.

Great third part to this quartet of creepy books for kids. In some ways I think this is the strongest of the set so far.

Another fun and spooky entry in this series. I enjoyed the atmospheric and creepy deserted island setting in this story. I also liked that a side character from previous titles in this series had a bigger role in this book. I love the friendship between Ollie, Coco and Brian and I appreciated how it continued to evolve and grow in this book. Additionally, the kids' parents were more present in this book, which added additional family dynamics and made the characters feel even more real. While not quite as "edge of your seat" (for me, at least) as the previous books, this book did a great job of exploring emotions and was still pretty creepy. Fans of the series, as well as fans of spooky stories in general, would enjoy this title.

Brian, Coco and Ollie have cemented their friendship by surviving and succeeding against ghosts and the smiling man. Their most recent experience seems to have left a whole busload of students with a bad case of amnesia and them with deepening fears of a future encounter of the supernatural and eerie kind. It isn’t long before a much-needed and fun-filled boating excursion with Ollie’s dad and Coco’s mother plus Brian’s hockey teammate Phil becomes a rematch against the smiling man and his current weapon of choice-a vicious water snake with a venomous bite. Inevitably, the boat they are on is sunk, the captain lost and the group is marooned on an island behind the mist and mirrors with Ollie’s dad near death Ollie willing to make whatever deal she has to in order to save him. Readers will devour this book and will be left screaming at the cliff-hanger conclusion. Fortunately, the final installment of this quartet of horror will be complete in 2022 and then readers will get to see what else Katherine Arden has in store for them! Text is free of profanity and sexual content and the violence is gore and blood-free, while still vivid enough to satisfy any middle grade fan of the horror genre. Brian is Jamaican and the girls are described as fair- and light brown-skinned. Race of Phil and his uncle is indeterminate. Highly recommended for ages 10-13 and while reading the books in order is suggested, I read this 3rd book first and was quickly brought up to speed within the 1st chapter without being too specifically informed of the events in books 1 & 2.

Dark Waters was a great addition to the series! I think it's just scary enough to be considered horror for middle schoolers, but not quite so terrifying to give them nightmares. The inclusion of the parents into the drama was a surprising choice, and it will be interesting to see where Arden goes from here! The cover of the fourth book definitely ups the ante.

This review is based on an ARC copy.

I am not one to usually pick up stories with a creepy storyline but this one sounded good. Oh boy, did it deliver on the creepy. I was enthralled and on the edge of my seat. I was a little out of my element so everything seemed to take me by surprise but it was definitely a good Halloween read.

“Dark Waters” is the third book in the Small Spaces series by Katherine Arden. once again Coco, Ollie, and Brian must try to survive a harrowing situation brought on by the Smiling Man. The story starts with them receiving another confusing missive from the Smiling Man, who wants them to take part in another one of his challenges. They believe that they have figured out the message and that they can avoid the trap. However they are once again caught within the web of his plot. The game is on, time to stay alive and escape.

This was another wonderful addition to the series, it is a very quick read. It ended on a cliffhanger that made me immediately wish that I had the next book! If spooky fantastical adventures are your jam, give this series a try.

This third installment is not as exciting as the first two, but it does move the series into an epic showdown with its main villain. This title felt a little disconnected from the previous books and downsized the main character quite a bit in order to flesh out the other characters in the series.

The Small Spaces series by Katherine Arden has been one of my favorite spooky middle-grade series since it began in 2018. Dark Waters is the third and penultimate book in the series and it is set during the springtime, after book one which was set in autumn/fall, and book two in winter.

In Dark Waters, Coco, Ollie, and Brian have spent the months since the events of Dead Voices researching everything they can about the Smiling Man, but to no avail. They live every day in fear of what he will do next, and the stress is beginning to take its toll—even their parents have begun to notice that something is amiss. When they are all invited on a day trip aboard a sailing ship on the local lake, they jump at the chance to relax for a day, even if the lake is supposedly home to both a monster and a lost ship from local legend.

However, their trip is cut short when their boat is attacked and they find themselves marooned on an uncharted island. Here they find messages carved on trees, a mysterious ax-wielding man, and fish hooks hanging from trees. All the while, Ollie’s dad is succumbing to a strange illness brought on by whatever sank their boat. Can the kids find their way off the island in time to save everyone?

This was a great third entry to the series but ended up not being my favorite due to its shockingly abrupt ending that quite literally came out of nowhere. The pacing felt a little off somehow, and I never had the same sense of creeping foreboding on the island that I did from the haunted/otherwordly spaces of the previous two books. I also felt that there wasn’t enough focus on the Smiling Man in this one, nor were some of my favorite series elements like Ollie’s magical watch included enough.

What I did absolutely love was the subplot of the axman. While it was fairly obvious from his introduction who he was—at least to me reading as an adult—there were several twists to his story I didn’t see coming that were all linked to an incredibly tragic and touching backstory. This ended up being a truly beautiful little story within a story and one of my favorite parts of the whole Small Spaces saga.

While Dark Waters isn’t my favorite of the three books so far, it does a great job of setting up a dramatic conclusion to the series. I’m already looking forward to reading the final book, but with no indication so far of when that will be coming out, I’m going to have to live with this cliffhanger for the foreseeable future.

Just when you thought Vermont was safe for the trio from Small Spaces and Dead Voices, a blood-thirsty sea serpent shows up to trap them and their families on an island that only they can see. As in the previous books in the series, Arden ratchets up the intensity bit by bit until the reader doesn't dare put the story down. A very satisfying middle grade tale of horror.