Scream All Night – Derek Milman

A darkly hilarious contemporary realistic young adult novel about growing up and finding your place in the world, perfect for fans of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and Running With Scissors.

Dario Heyward knows one thing: He’s never going back to Moldavia Studios, the iconic castle that served as the set, studio, and home to the cast and crew of dozens of cult classic B-horror movies. It’s been three years since Dario’s even seen the place, after getting legally emancipated from his father, the infamous director of Moldavia’s creature features.

But then Dario’s brother invites him home to a mysterious ceremony involving his father and a tribute to his first film—The Curse of the Mummy’s Tongue. Dario swears his homecoming will be a one-time visit. A way for him to get closure on his past—and reunite with Hayley, his first love and costar of Zombie Children of the Harvest Sun, a production fraught with real-life tragedy—and say good-bye for good. But the unthinkable happens—Dario gets sucked back into the twisted world of Moldavia and the horrors, both real and imagined, he’s left there.

With only months to rescue the sinking studio and everyone who has built their lives there, Dario must confront the demons of his past—and the uncertainties of his future. But can he escape the place that’s haunted him his whole life?

SCREAM ALL NIGHT was an enjoyable book! I’ve been loving books with dark humor like UNDEAD GIRL GANG and KILL THE BOY BAND and SCREAM ALL NIGHT seemed like the perfect recommendation for those books so I knew I wanted to give it a shot!

The beginning of the book started off with a bang (quite literally, actually. No pun intended, but well-fitting). Instantly there was some dark comedy, a wacky family, and some laugh-out-loud moments and I knew I would love this book! Then it kind of dissipated as the book went along and those laugh-out-loud moments were fewer and fewer. It wasn’t in a bad way, but the book got a little more serious than I had anticipated and overall, I had found myself wishing for a bit more hijinks and wacky, weird comedy. Dario’s brother was just a bit too weird sometimes and it lost some of that humor for me whereas other characters could have brought more of that comedy to the scene and didn’t. I mean, these were merely my anticipations of the book so I’m not critiquing that it should have been there, just that it was what I was hoping for. I think I was just hoping for more zany weird and sarcastic weird instead of “this guy may actually be delusional” weird.

The plot was actually interesting and had a great message, really coming together nicely in the end. Dario’s family is quite complicated and abusive (both physically and psychologically) so throughout the book, there’s a constant question of whether he’ll stick with the family that he had emancipated himself from now that his father is gone or continue to venture out on his own in the world. There are a lot of different layers of these familial relationships and I really appreciated how Derek Milman handled everything! It wasn’t just a mean parent or a jealous sibling, etc etc. There were a lot of different moving pieces that caused Dario’s family to fall apart as it did, or rather, converge on him in a sort of attack.

The horror movie aspect of the book was so much fun and I love how it played into everything! It wasn’t just that the family ran a horror production company — the business and movies themselves played big parts in everyone’s lives in different ways and it truly shaped the book and the characters. I loved that it sort of played its own role in the book and was used as a way for the characters to communicate with one another. Sometimes the movies made spoke words that the characters couldn’t. Other times the movies were used to heal. Sometimes the movies were moments of reaching out. It was really neat and very well-written how everything really did tie together.

I think I was just expecting to be a little more connected and didn’t anticipate the middle of the book to be so serious — I was just anticipating a lot more of that comedy and an actual light feel for the whole book and the book just wasn’t meant to be an LOL-fest the whole time. I did enjoy my read of SCREAM ALL NIGHT and it was a good book for me. I had a hard time knowing what I wanted to start for my first book of the year and I started and stopped a couple that just weren’t feeling right. This was the first book I started and wanted to finish and I’m definitely glad I read it!

Kept Me Hooked On: Unique realistic fiction stories. This wasn’t one I probably would have picked up on my own (I picked it up as a rec!) and it was really neat reading something like this!
Left Me Wanting More: Laughs. It wasn’t that the book needed more comedy, it’s just that it’s what I was expecting for some reason. I think I personally would have enjoyed it more if it was a constant riot of funny, but that was my personal expectation.

Addiction Rating
Add it to your TBR!

It’s definitely worth checking out and was a fun and also lovely read. I liked seeing this unique family and a different perspective that I don’t normally read.

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