Customer Reviews

Who Let the Ghosts Out? (Mostly Ghostly)

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Max is an 11-year-old boy who is haunted by two ghosts named Nicky and Tara. Nicky and Tara need to find their parents and they want Max to help them. Like Max has enough problems already. His father wants him to go to a boarding school so he'll be more like his older brother Colin, and Max's school crush Traci thinks he's weird. And if that isn't enough, there is an evil ghoul named Phears who wants Nicky and Tara. When Max decides to help, he must go through challenges that, in my opinion, make him a braver person. It also makes him look cool around the kids at school.

I really liked this story. Although I read the second book of this series first ("Have You Met My Ghoulfriend?"), I was able to understand what was going on. I laughed out loud and shivered with fright throughout reading this. I can't wait to start reading the third book.

R.L. Stine writes REALLY GOOD, CREEPY, SPINE-TINGLING stories, but this story was just kinda, well, not even scary a bit. The main thing about this book was a comedy book with certain points to laugh at.
It's about a boy named Max Doyle, who is haunted by 2 ghost kids who died. Now Max has to find out a way to save them from an evil ghost named PHEARS. Now Max has also has to save his self.

Good Things:

1. Good Beginning, makes you intrested
2. Good characters, there's the geeky kid, Max Doyle, the two rich kids, Nicky and Tara, and the popular girl, Traci.
3. The perspectives of each characters

Bad Things:
1. The ghost, there's not even scary. There's goofy
2. Max Doyles magic stinks

This book is good to read. Read it, and you might enjoy.

Max Doyle hated his life. He didn't have any normal friends, he's teased by the other kids, his big brother is a jerk, and his father wants to send him away to a boarding school where the students are tortured. Just when Max thought things couldn't get any worse, they do. Max is visited by two ghosts--about his age--named Nicky and Tara. They claim to have previously lived in his house, and they'll do anything to find out how they died and where their parents are.

Max tries to ignore the two ghosts--he doesn't want to get involved. But it's impossible to ignore them when they try to help the cute girl at school notice Max. Unfortunately, they end up embarrasing him. But no matter how hard Max wants to get rid of them, he knows that he must help them destroy the evil ghost Phears. Phears knows all the secrets. Now, it's up to Max to destroy Phears and find out the truth!

WHO LET THE GHOSTS OUT? seemed like a pretty weird book. But I picked it up since I'm a fan of R.L. Stine. As I started reading, I excepted everything to be all silly and childish. Boy, was I wrong. This novel is fantastic! It has horror, humor, and even a little romance. I will be looking forward to reading more books in the Mostly Ghostly series, and I recommend that fans of dark comedies do so, too.

When Max sees ghosts and the ghosts says he is the only one who can help them fight the most gruesome creature in the ghost world called Phears. Will Max ever get rid of the ghosts?

In this first installment of the Mostly Ghostly we are introduced to Max, an 11 year old boy who has got some issues! He thinks his house his haunted (which it is, but no one is his family believes him); he's got an overbearing, bully of a brother; a father whose only interested in how macho his son's are and cares nothing at all that Max is smart, Aaron his best friend who takes laziness to unheard of heights; and a mom who isn't much of a character at all, other than being a foil for the dad. Max seems to live perpetually under the threat of being sent off to military school if he doesn't start acting in the way his father thinks is appropriate...meaning he should be into sports and spend less time on school work and all that thinking.

Poor Max...he's in for a whole lot of trouble when Nicky and Tara show up because only Max can see these two ghosts and they are a bit confused themselves. They don't know how they died, they keep disappearing, there is a REALLY mean and violent ghost trying to capture them...and this ghost makes Max's life hell in the process. This first book in the Mostly Ghostly series sets up, what appears to be a rather long and involved mystery...where are Nicky and Tara's parents, how did they die and what's the deal with Phears? I suspect it will be many, many volumes before we find out. Mostly Ghostly is ok, but not great. The characters are all stereotypical and lackluster, Max is not all that bright and I just didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. I mean who are we kidding, this story is told in the extreme...Max is SO ostracized by the other kids...he's SO picked upon (quite violently and in front of his parents, who can usually only manage a lame...oh, stop it) by his jock brother, and SO picked upon further by his jock father...because it's apparently more important to be manly and into sports than it is to have a brain and, oh...get good grades, and his mom...ug, what a dishwater character...constantly gushing Maxie this and that...YUCK!

What gets me is that Max is kinda whiney and in the end, isn't even all that honorable of a character. What exactly are we supposed to be picking up here...this isn't like the Nightmare Room series where each book is a stand alone story. In the Mostly Ghostly series, each book ends with a "To be Continued" and builds from the one before it, so it's not like the author HAD to make the point so bluntly and in an in your face way...he has plenty of time to build characters from the ground up...but he doesn't. He just stacks the deck with stereotypical icons and rushes on with the story. I'll read a few more to see if I want to continue the series. Girl seemed to like this more than me...but then it plays right into kids belief that their parents are mean and nasty and that no one understands them...not really the best message to be sending out for a very long series of books....here's hoping!