I loved following these four friends on their adventure. The imagery was fantastically creepy and the characters were perfectly lovable.

Pennies stays in the realm of „middle grade appropriate“ so you can recommend this read to your gothic-fairy-tale loving young ones, those that appreciate a little bit of spooky.. but don’t pass this up for yourself because of the „middle grade“ label. It‘s great fun.

Though this book remains quite accessible and never crosses the line into outright gore, reach for Pennies if your kiddo is craving an (age appropriate) scare. Some creepy imagery and murder themes. YES that‘s what we came here for! Just be aware for our more sensitive lovelies.

I highly recommend this read for any kiddo (or adult!) looking for a few chills in the dark with a group of hodge podge friends.

Review will be posted at https://www.instagram.com/readandrepeet/ on August 24 2025.

It was OK. Kind of like Coraline. I might have liked this more if I had read The Clackity, which it is a prequel to. It is definitely a tricky genre, horror for children; it had to strike a difficult balance with being scary, but not too scary. The world building is very interesting but I felt like the characters were a little bland and the writing style was wordy and could have flowed better.