• Wretched Waterpark (The Sinister Summer #1)

Wretched Waterpark
(The Sinister Summer #1)

Publication Date
June 07, 2022
Genre / Grade Band
Fiction /  6th − 7th
Wretched Waterpark (The Sinister Summer #1)

Description

Meet the Sinister-Winterbottoms: brave Theo, her timid twin, Alexander, and their older sister, Wil.

They're stuck for the summer with their Aunt Saffronia, who doesn't know how often children need to eat and can't use a smartphone, and whose feet never quite seem to touch the floor when she glides--er--walks. When Aunt Saffronia suggests a week pass to the Fathoms of Fun Waterpark, they hastily agree. But the park is even stranger than Aunt Saffronia. The waterslides look like gray gargoyle tongues. The employees wear creepy black dresses and deliver ominous messages. An impossible figure is at the top of the slide tower, people are disappearing, and suspicious goo is seeping into the wave pool.

Something mysterious is happening at Fathoms of Fun, and it's up to the twins to get to the bottom of it. The mystery, that is. not the wave pool. Definitely not the wave pool. But are Theo and Alexander out of their depth?

Publication date
June 07, 2022
Classification
Fiction
Page Count
-
ISBN-13
9780593379042
Lexile Measure
720
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Delacorte Press
Series
The Sinister Summer
BISAC categories
JUV019000 - Juvenile Fiction | Humorous Stories
JUV028000 - Juvenile Fiction | Mysteries, Espionage, & Detective Stories
JUV058000 - Juvenile Fiction | Paranormal, Occult & Supernatural
JUV018000 - Juvenile Fiction | Horror
Library of Congress categories
Brothers and sisters
Mystery and detective stories
Detective and mystery fiction
Missing persons
Twins
Amusement parks
Novels

Kirkus

Young goths will be all-in for the trippy mysteries.

ALA/Booklist

Readers who enjoy quirky mysteries will fall in love with the clever and relatable Sinister-Winterbottom twins, who will solve the mystery before their aunt shuffles them off to their next adventure.

Publishers Weekly

Twelve-year-old twins Theodora and Alexander Sinister-Winterbottom, and their 16-year-old sister Wilhelmina, encounter the summer-vacation unexpected via White's (the Camelot Rising trilogy) archly told, gleefully macabre series opener. In the middle of a night marked by "urgency and candles," the siblings are transported to a mysterious home to stay with equally mysterious maternal aunt, Saffronia Sinister, who "by all appearances, had never encountered an actual human child before." Telling them to "find what was lost," she drops them off at the Victorian-flavored, unusually grim Fathoms of Fun Waterpark, which features a slide named Oblivion and a wave pool called Cold, Unknowable Sea. Owned by dour Mrs. Widow, the amusement park thrills adrenaline fanatic Theo and unnerves cautious Alexander as they wander the grounds under Wil's nominal supervision, avoiding the lone eatery's mince pie and seeking the recently disappeared Mr. Widow. The caper moves briskly toward a tidy end, popping with witty dialogue and gothic puns, and pitting the twins, their technologically distracted sister, and a newfound ally against avaricious forces while hinting at larger series mysteries around the siblings' parents and collective memories. Alexander and Theo are white; Wil has brown skin. Ages 8-12. Agent: Michele Wolfson, Wolfson Literary. (June)

Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.
Kiersten White
Kiersten White has never been a lifeguard, camp counselor, or spa masseuse, but she is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including Wretched Waterpark, the first book in the Sinister Summer series, and Beanstalker and Other Hilarious Scarytales. She lives with her family near the beach and keeps all her secrets safely buried in her backyard, where they are guarded by a ferocious tortoise named Kimberly.

kierstenwhite.com
@kierstenwhite on Twitter
Other Books In Series:

The Sinister Summer

Wretched Waterpark (The Sinister Summer #1)
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