As a strong fan of Ness I was looking forward to reading this. Similar to other nominees he also highlighted the clichés within school and, In this book, wrote of the "indie kids" who deviated from social norms and got involved with paranormal activities. It was cleverly done and thoroughly enjoyable from the readers perspective as we saw both worlds (the indie kids and Mikey's) work at parallel in this little village. Although being very weird and slightly scary, I found it a great read and loved how these social norms were taken to the extreme. I also was awed at Ness's ability to sum up the "Indie" kids' side in minimal writing at the beginning of the chapter with both stories joining within the last few pages. Similar to other nominees in many ways as it's tackles the social norms of our society (Once and Silence is Gold fish) I loved how Ness was cleverly able to sculp the world Mikey and his friends live in and make it strangely believable. Beautiful written and enjoyable I