Dead Flip, retro teen scary vibes with a friendship backbeat

The 80s were chaotic, riddled with bad fashion that people thought was cool, produced some fabulous music, and is entertaining legions of teens nowadays. For the record ‘nowadays’ is possibly the oldest sounding word in the English language and is usually followed up with ‘back in my day’. Dead Flip is mglit that is all but served up with a heaping serving of Raisin Bran, featuring the iconic dancing raisins from 1989. It’s a fun book that today’s tweens and lower teens will enjoy because of the accurate 80s and 90’s shoutouts, as well as, the age-appropriate scares and drama.

Dead Flip does an excellent job of hooking potential readers. The cover has retro video games with a young tween kid playing a pinball machine. Set against this kid are four other older youth and the book’s title in contrasting neon red, set in that 80’s horror font, aka, the Stranger Things font. The cover immediately grabs your attention. It’s further dug into your inbox by the quote on the back jacket.

A boy’s eyes roll up into his head, he’s drooling uncontrollably, his neck veins are bulging and he’s unable to hear his friend. I’m paraphrasing because it’s a fun couple of sentences that you should read for yourself. That combination also sets the mood, for better or worse, for Dead Flip.

For example, if you’re a middle school student through high school student who is looking for a slice of life during the late 80s and early 90s, you’ll fall in line for Dead Flip. It oozes that era’s real teen happenings like a scientist dropping knowledge on the Periodic Table. They drink Mello Yellow, the girls wear Jordache Jeans, and the boys style their hair with the gel that all the dudes used. This is a book that’s more about the friendships those ages have than the spooky elements that might haunt them.

It’s not all 90210, there’s also a haunted pinball machine that might or might not be sucking people into it. There’s also a time jump in the book from when our titular characters are at the gangly age of 12, and then jumping forward four or five years to when they’re seniors in high school. It is at this advanced age when they meet a friend from the past who’s returned with just a hint of Pet Cemetery about them. There certainly are creep factors for those ages. However, don’t expect the same level of physical action or gore as the era’s films it harkens or the Netflix show it intends to remind people of.

That’s where Dead Flip fell short for us. We wanted more gore, more scares, monsters, and scary situations. When I was a teen I was reading Clive Barker and the horror that incorporated fiction back the day, because, back in my day books that marketed themselves as scary were scary, got in the way of your sleep, and made you see monsters during the day. That’s not what the book is, and the fact that it didn’t have that simply means that the cover did an excellent job of hooking me in.

As long as tween, teen readers, or their parents know that Dead Flip is mglit that’s aimed at entertaining them while proving age-appropriate scares, then the book is a great fit. It provides enough action, with that age-appropriate scary vibe in a retro package that those ages will eat up.

Dead Flip is by Sara Farizan and available on Algonquin Young Readers, an imprint of Workman Publishing.

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