Teresa AKA Replay experienced a horrific accident that left her crippled with fear and anxiety. Her main way to cope is through streaming and the online community that she builds. However, the safety of her online words crashes down as strange and creepy things start happening to all her favourite streamers. And her.

From the very beginning, this was creepy. And the author did not let up on the creepy factor. This set the scene for a book that, once I started, I couldn’t keep my eyes away from. The world was very claustrophobic, and made me feel anxious any time Teresa stepped out of her room. The book held true to what I expect in a YA novel, if not raised the stakes even more. I have not read any YA horrors that creeped me out the way this one did.
The age range and choice of streaming sits very well with YA as most teenagers are watching YouTube or Twitch and interacting. The language of the chats was also very appropriate for the age range.

The formatting style of this book was a unique choice, having most of the pages in either stream, chat, or other forum layouts. This added to the immersion of the book and was where it was mainly creepy.
For 95 percent of the book, the execution was flawless. However, the ending did not make sense for the story that was told. It was confusing, and took me out of the story.

I would recommend this book to anyone in their late teens to early twenties, as this is a poignant look into the life of a streamer with anxiety, and teaches an important lesson that sometimes we need to log off.

Overall this book gets 4 stars. Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Group for the Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The premise was good for a YA horror novel. I thought the chat was a little distracting. I think the author should have cut some of that out and spent more time with character development. The chat felt like a big part of the book. I did like the cover though. Reminded me of horror book covers from the 80s and 90s.

First of all,
I really love the cover. Its so cute!
Second of all,
This book was really good. I went in expecting not the worst and I got story that was pretty darn good.

Thank you Netgalley and Penguin random house.

I had such an amazing time with this book. Mar Romasco-Moore had me hooked from beginning to end. Genuinely tence and creepy in the best way. I will definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes to stream/watch games on Twitch, or just go down old reddit rabbit holes online. I'm excited to check out more of Mar Romasco-Moore books.

Content Warnings⚠️

Body Horror
Suicide
Mental illness

Thank you Netgalley for providing me an Arc for my honest review.

I'm not typically a fan of books that involve streaming but the cover was fantastic as was the blurb and I'm happy to say that the story lived up to both.

I could not put this book down!!!!
Going into Deadstream, I made every effort to put aside ANY expectations and just have fun with it. Being a fan of movies such as “Unfriended” and “Cam”, I know how difficult a story like this can be to pull off. As a movie? Pretty difficult. As a novel? I would say near impossible. But Mar Romasco-Moore handled this story beautifully. It was creepy, a bit scary at times, and had me not wanting to look at screens for a good while after I finished it.
The structure of this book kept me hooked. I thought it was really cool how the streaming chapters were formatted and written. It was immersive and engaging. Teresa’s chapters were also written well and she was a strong main character.
One of my favorite things about Teresa was that she felt realistic. She’s a teen girl struggling to adapt to life after a tragedy left her with severe anxiety that presents very similarly to OCD. As someone who struggles with OCD, I was excited to see a character I could relate to so well in one of my favorite genres.
That is not to say that the book is flawless. I think some readers will find the last portion of the book to be a bit cheesy or be confused by the ending. And occasionally (as in maybe once), the narration in Teresa’s chapters feels a bit inconsistent. But this didn’t take away from the story for me.
All of this to say, Deadstream is a new favorite of mine and I cannot wait to have a physical copy in my hands. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys horror, especially if you’re chronically online like most of us are.
Now I plan to take a much needed break from screen time and try to forget some of the creepy images this book put into my brain.

*Huge thanks to Mar Romasco-Moore, Penguin Group | Viking Books, and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced e-book of Deadstream in exchange for honest review.*

This was a fun one! I even found myself genuinely spooked a few times which is always a good thing in my book. I enjoyed how Mar Romasco-Moore incorporated modern chat slang and communication. As a gamer, it was fun, relatable and engaging to see this story play out through online communities. The ending did feel a bit more rushed, but part of that was probably just me wanting more.

Thank you Netgalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.
This book follows Teresa, a gaming streamer. She witnesses a change in an a fellow online streamer’s behaviour and from there paranormal things begin. I thought the beginning of this book was slightly repetitive but as it went on got really good. I loved creepy it was towards the end but the ending wasn’t my favourite.

Coming from someone who lived on the old Fear Street novels, I loved this book!

It’s a found footage sort of deal, and kind of reminds me of that movie Host that was shot in quarantine, mainly because the majority takes place through the screen following video game streamers. This genre is like catnip for me, I’ll watch any found footage. Just on that alone, it was a fun read for me.

I’m not in the target audience for YA anymore so take this with a grain of salt, but the way the kids talk didn’t feel too overdone to me. It seemed like the author was pretty decent at simulating netspeak, to what actual kids posting online and DMing would sound like. It didn’t bother me at least.

I actually found this decently scary, a little more gory and “goes there” more than the other YA I’ve read. I was surprised by that but pleased to see it.

Deadstream explains everything you need, and nothing you don’t. The horror genre frequently falls into the trappings of either over-explaining and removing the scary, or under explaining and feeling half baked. There’s none of that here, it’s great.

There are legitimate horror payoffs here, it doesn’t pull a punch, and it pulls off the rare sticking the ending. 4.5/5 stars, check it out YA horror fans.

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin for sending this book for review
This was great and just in time for Halloween (late review), it was a little fast paced but, it worked in favor of the book! I also loved the main character Teresa, I find her relatable and following her on her journey was a rollercoaster of a ride!
This reminded me of the Mummy meets The Ring and was my first novel by this author!

I really enjoyed this book! It has the perfect creepy and unsettling feeling as it’s things we know so well ourselves! Additionally the twists just kept coming which made it really enjoyable to read. I didn’t see the actual last 30% coming at all honestly.

DEADSTREAM is a book that moves fast and hits hard - our main character, Teresa, is an agoraphobic teen dealing with trauma by completely isolating herself from the real world and finding solace in the online world of streaming, and those are pretty much her defining character traits. Other characters are likewise a bit flat, but work as components to the story of the haunted internet going after successful streamers. The horror/thriller elements work great, and the diversity of characters present pick up a lot of the development slack.

Teens into the streaming and gaming worlds will find a lot to love here, as will fans of techno-horror like Unfriended and Host.

Really enjoyed this one! I should have read it so much sooner! But I don’t regret it. This maybe a new obsession! I love the characters, plot, etc.

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

I could NOT put this down. Fast paced, scary, queer as hell. There were so many parts that genuinely scared me. Enough for me to make this a daytime only book. Teresa was such a lovely character, and maybe a little too relatable.

The ending felt maybe a tiny bit preachy to me but that was really my only dislike of it altogether.

Rear Window and The Ring feels like an apt description, mixed a little with Unfriended. This was my first novel from this author and I'm excited to check out the rest of their work! Very scary and well written.

I rounded my rating up for this book, since It helped me through a book slump: 3.5 stars overall.

DEADSTREAM is a book about a teen streamer who has agoraphobia, and is unable to leave her house, and on bad days, her room. Theresa’s life is in her computer, where she streams on an undisclosed social media app. Something strange is going on in the streaming world. It seems that a famous streamer Brick has opened a door during the live stream, inviting a deadly spirit into his life, his computer and begins an otherworldly infestation of poltergeist proportions. Theresa is drawn into a paranoid experience, when she begins to be haunted by the same entity that has Brick acting strange.

I liked the concept of the story, I really did. It’s not super deep, but I’m not the target audience for this book, so maybe I’m biased. I like Theresa as a character, following her on her journey was wild at times. At the end of the book, our main takeaways involve an interesting thought: what happens to your online spirit after you die? Can your ghost remain trapped on the internet, long after your IRL form has passed away? What happens to your internet presence after you die?

An eerie concept I hope writers explore more in the years to come.

Final thoughts: Do not- I repeat, DO NOT- read this book if you hated that scene from The Mummy. You know… the scene where the bugs crawl under his skin? The climax of the book honestly had me skimming cause, wow, my brain canNOT do buggy things 😭😭

Deadstream had a promising premise and I was having fun while reading it (comparing the book to "The Ring" already had me intrigued). In the end, this book was the equivalent to reading a modern "GOOSEBUMPS" story. The spookiness and anticipation was high in the first few chapters. Reading how Brick was slowly eroding away helplessly was terrifying. Theresa was a great MC and is a relatable character especially to the younger audience the book is geared toward. They had experience a traumatic event and became recluse hiding behind the internet and a online persona that felt more like them. The LGBTQ+ presence in this book on how Theresa was discovering who they were and how it translated to how they viewed streamers/streaming was done so well. The book also did a great job dealing with mental health when it comes to anxiety and how the internet plays a part in increasing fears of isolation or can create a positive community for those needing an escape. It highlighted some good issues with streaming including doxxing, swatting, misogyny, and cancel culture. This would be a horror to a lot of pre-teens/teens who are lookin to build an online identity. As someone who watches streamers occasionally and sees the "parasocial" nature of the commenters, the pages of chat logs had me laughing. I can tell that Mar Romasco-Moore did really good research on how people type and it added the humor in-between the creepy.

Now for the not-so-great part of this book. Theresa/Replay relationship felt a bit rushed toward the end. It would have made the ending feel more meaningful. At most what we got were conversations that ended too quickly so it made me think it was more of a one sided crush. Also, the ending resolution did feel a bit convoluted and silly to me. Not to give too much detail but It felt like that last sequence of events felt detached from the rest of the story.

Overall, I would recommend Deadstream to a younger audience looking for a quick, not to scary read. If you are constantly online and into online gaming culture then this book is definitely for you!

With the rise of social media, streaming, and living one’s life online - the internet has been a place sorely lacking in good horror content focused solely on that. There’s been a few decent games and ARG’s I can think of that focus on the internet as the birthplace of the horror (the game Simulacra comes to mind), but as a whole I find it difficult to find many ventures into this genre to be both believable and entertaining.

Deadstream, in my opinion, has a wonderful start to how the horror begins - slowly, and with increasing believability. With our main character recovering from the death of her friend after a car crash, she’s become agoraphobic and only gets her socialization online - typically through either streaming herself, or watching others stream. As someone who watches a lot of streamers, and has for a few years, I found these parts of the novel to be realistic and believable - the live chat, the reactions, the streamers content and speaking voice - all of which, made it remarkably easy for me to imagine I was also watching this stream and was involved in the chat.

With that note, I will say that I think someone who doesn’t regularly watch streamers online, and isn’t familiar with the kind of chat lingo that comes with it, as well as other typical fandom content on places like Reddit or Twitter, I do think you might be a bit lost during these parts. In being realistic, I do think if you’re unused to the speaking tone and the “chat-speak” that’s common during these things, you won’t get the full picture. However, if you do know these things, I personally found it to be one of the only times I’ve found the inclusion of this side of the internet to be realistic and charming - rather than cringy and painful to read.

However, I will admit that a majority of my 4 star rating has come more from this beginning than how this book ended, as once the “reveal” of what exactly was happening was done I was less invested and found the entire thing to (somehow) become less believable. While the idea of something that haunted streamers and sent them catatonic was an interesting take, I think - once we (as the main character) knew the cause, it was suddenly less frightening or interesting. Not to spoil anything, but there was one scene with a character in a car that felt absolutely ridiculous and by that point I was just reading to finish the book, to be completely honest.

While I understood our main character’s anxiety, I didn’t personally think that there was a serious need to have the background of her dead friend being the cause of her agoraphobia - at times it felt out of place, and since this aspect is never fully explored I didn’t think it was necessary. There are many reasons a person may become, or already is, agoraphobic, and I think any could have been explored with our main character and nothing would have changed. The parts in this book that focused on this section of our main character’s past felt less explored or thought out than the rest of the book, and it personally felt to me like a last-minute addition to give a “reason” for her behavior.

I also kind of found the ending to have, while an interesting take on the entire thing, to have felt a bit too cheesy and not for me. However, considering the reasoning for the entire paranormal stream activity in the first place, it does - in a way - fit, but it personally took me out of the story by the time I reached it.

However - as a whole, I found this book to be a fun exploration of horror set in a modern digital age, with the focus being on streaming and the many doors that can - unintentionally - open, both to those streaming and those watching. While I think that this book had a strong start and may have missed the mark near the end, I do recommend it if you were looking for some fast-paced campy modern digital horror, as the premise was extremely well done and (at least for the parts focusing in the streaming) it never cut my immersion.

A huge thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Penguin Young Readers Group for providing this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

First off, I received this as an Arc and would like to thank netgalley and Publisher Penguin group for the opportunity to read this book. At first the beginning of the book left me asking what happened to Teresa and why she refused to leave her room, as well as to why streaming wqs so important to her. I was a bit out of place as I have not used any live streaming sites or any of that but once I looked up a few things I knew what was being mentioned. This book was a fast read and part of that is due to the chat pages which were definently needed as it added alot to the story. The author did a very good job keeping me interested in wanting to know what was happening and what's going to happen next. Not sure if it was intentional but I really liked how it portrayed the need some people have to feel liked and to have people pay attention to them, as well as how it could also be negative as well. After the first 20% of the book I really got into it and the book stayed consistent on keeping me engaged. I really enjoyed the part between Teresa and Becks and rhe telescope near the end.

Deadstream offers an intriguing mix of modern internet culture and supernatural horror. As someone familiar with streaming and online communities, I found the portrayal of live streams authentic and relatable. The storyline is engaging and held my interest with its eerie premise and tense atmosphere.

However, I struggled with the format, particularly the sections featuring stream chats. It was often hard to follow, though this could be an issue with the Kindle version rather than the book itself. While the plot was interesting, it was somewhat predictable, and I found myself guessing the twists early on.

Overall, a solid read for fans of YA thrillers with a digital twist, but it didn’t fully deliver on the suspense it promised.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my e-ARC of Deadstream!

𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔
🎧 love to stream (or just watch them)
😬 have high anxiety
💻 have a lot of online friends
👻 have ever seen a ghost

• 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐓’𝐒 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓

After surviving a car accident that claimed the life of her best friend, Teresa is now terrified to leave the safety of her bedroom. Since then, her only solace and window to the outside world has been the online community she found through streaming.

But one night, the safe world Teresa created starts to break down. A shadowy figure appears in the background of her favorite's streamer's video, and his behavior mysteriously changes over the next few days before he dies in front of thousands of viewers. Teresa finds herself at the center of a life-and-death investigation as the world tries to figure out what or who this figure could be . . . especially as it begins appearing in the other people's streams, compelling them to "open the door" and let it in—including Teresa’s own. In order to save herself and the rest of the internet from this relentless entity, Teresa must venture outside of the mental and physical walls she’s created. But will she be able to conquer her fears before anyone else loses their life?

• 𝐌𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒

This was an intriguing read right from the start! I loved the premise, and the fact that this written in such a unique way had me really hooked. It was probably formatted a bit differently on the kindle than it’ll be in print, but overall I was able to read it with relative ease. I learned a lot more about streaming than I ever knew before. I loved the direction this story took as well with the ghost. The ending creeped me out too! I think this could be a really cool movie!