It begins with a dare. It’s 1972 and eleven year olds Shell (Michelle), Gray (Graham), Charlie and Sam are hanging out as they always do, enjoying their summer holidays. It’s been a hot one and swimming is a big part of it. But the water in the quarry outside their town is off limits.

Gazing down from what the locals call Hag’s Drop, they dare each other to step closer to the edge of the crumbling cliff. Even Shell who is blind, gives it a go to the horror of her friends. She assures them she can do anything they do, but they are still frightened at the possibility of losing her. After all, this is the ill-fated place where scores of witches were thrown off, centuries before.

At the arrival of a group of village bullies, this fear of Shell falling is soon replaced by another horror – putting Sam in hospital who is then plagued by nightmares afterwards. These four friends are bonded even further by a secret they must keep about what really happened above the quarry.

But even though their secret fills them with guilt also linking them to their bullies, something else happened that night that defies description. The boys swear they saw something. Shell swears she heard something. But did they really? Or did the long standing village reputation of Hag’s Drop influence their imaginations in an already terrible night?

Gray, toughened by a life of family neglect and indifference tells them all to forget. Charlie’s talent with story telling has helped develop his imagination, and it is running wild more than usual, having him hanging onto his asthma inhaler. Sam’s parents now hover over him after his ‘accident’ and Shell’s parents, the same.

Despite Gray’s order, they cannot forget. The desire to know more about what they heard and what they saw sends them down a path for the truth, bringing all they have learnt, heard and experienced for themselves together in a draw dropping conclusion.

Think the Stand by Me movie. Or IT, also by Stephen King. Or even Stranger Things from Netflix. What these books and movies all have in common is a tight group of friends all aged around 11-12 who experience something terrible and try to put things back together amongst the fallout.

All four characters in What We All Saw are well drawn and relatable in this creepy story which is being retold by one boy named Sam, to the reader.

Folklore, horror, historical fact and friendship are all in the mix as four tweens try to figure out what really happened one night. Throw in a spooky house, a terrible secret and a shocking crime reveal and What We All Saw has everything I needed to hold me enthralled. It isn’t all scary though, with constant comebacks and jibes between the friends as they learn the truth about their village’s history.

The creepy stories one boy tells and the nightmares from another (all clearly marked in italics) are both keys to pulling together all the terrifying threads of this tale. Just when you think there might be a logical reason to everything, a curveball comes up that quarry cliff and nearly knocks you off it.

As a fan of all things creepy, What We All Saw is right up there with the best. I’d love to see it in theatres to be freaked out all over again!

Author – Mike Lucas

Age – 12+

Shortlist – Prime Minister’s Literary Awards

Shortlist – The Children’s Book of the Year Awards

(2022, Penguin, Horror, Scary, Freaky, Creepy, Witches, Quarry, Murder, Crime, Guilt, Secret, Spooky House, Historical, 1970’s, 1972, Village, Friendship, Blindness, Courage, Mystery, Witch Hunting, Stories, Story telling, Revenge)