I can’t take it anymore. I need to talk about Hello Neighbor, and I need to talk about the prequel to the game, Missing Pieces by Carly Anne West. I read this book a month ago, and I became obsessed. I loved everything about this book, so excuse me if I’m going to fangirl hard from now on.

About the game:

To give you a little bit of context, Hello Neighbor is a horror and “escape the room” type of game, where you actually don’t want to escape any room, but instead getting into the neighbour house. The objective of the game is to discover what the neighbour is hiding in the basement without getting caught. And here is when all the mystery starts.

As the game was being developed, several version were released to the public to help improve the game and work out bugs, something that is becoming quite common nowadays. With every version, the mystery behind the neighbour’s basement was getting more and more intriguing and becoming more and more popular. And the theories started to appear.

To be honest, Hello Neighbor isn’t the type of game that I enjoy playing, but the mysteriousness surrounding the story kept me hooked for months. I watched many hours of videos to try to discover as much as I could about the neighbour. But when the final version of the game came out, I was disappointed. I was expecting all those “clues” in the game to have an answer and be part of a big mind-blowing story, that it felt too simple. Not only that, but the game opened up even more questions instead of giving answers.

I was sad the story in the game didn’t progress how I was hoping, that the game was not story-driven enough. And when I discovered a book series based on the game, I decided to give it a shot. Best. Decision. Of. My. Life.

Author: Carly Anne West Publisher: Scholastic Pages: 208 Genre: MG, Mystery, Suspense, Horror Publication: 28th August 2018

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Synopsis:

Nicky Roth has always been a lonely kid. But that all changes when he and his family move to Raven Brooks and meet their eccentric neighbours, the Petersons. Nicky befriends the Petersons’ son, Aaron, bonding over their talents for tinkering. Soon the boys are inseparable and using their skills to pull pranks on the townspeople.

But something about Aaron bothers Nicky, people seem almost afraid of him and his family. Through snippets from Aaron and a lot of sleuthing in the town’s archives, Nicky discovers a dark past haunting his neighbours, a streak of bad luck they can’t seem to shake. Aaron thinks that’s all behind them now, but Nicky has a feeling the Petersons are fated for another tragedy.

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Review:

At first, I was scared that the story would differ in a lot of points from the game and would break the illusion of this being the “true story” behind it all. But when I started to know Nicky and finding a lot of references to the game, all those thoughts disappeared. Every time Nicky picked up a flashlight, I smiled. I felt I was discovering little Easter Eggs throughout the story, and it was so much fun. The flashlight, the mannequins, the nightmares, the supermarket, the neighbour’s house, the basement door, and the golden apple! From the moment it talked about the golden apple, I knew I had found my own golden apple. OH MY! It even says what the golden apple really is! Thank you! I’ve asked that question myself for months since the apple remained a mystery in the final version of the game.

Basically, I was reading a book about two characters I already knew, exploring how they met, and the secrets they were hiding. In the meantime, I was learning a lot of new information as well: who were Nick’s parents, Mr Peterson’s family, the other families in town, and even more secrets. All of them creating a story as full as I wanted it to be from the start. The fact that Nicky believes in Aliens as gods or that his father has chocolates for every mood has nothing to do with the mystery, but it helps to grow the story.

Despite being a middle-grade book, it still was “scary”. There was always an eerie and creepy atmosphere with everything surrounding the neighbour. At some points, when I closed the book, I couldn’t dare to look at Mr Peterson’s face. Even though the illustrations are cute and fun, it can become quite dark as the story progresses, and what it seems like a normal family portrait suddenly becomes hunted.

Video games and books are a combination that appeals to a very specific niche. People that don’t enjoy video games or don’t care about them, usually don’t appreciate these books as much. I’ve seen reviews complaining of a book be too centred on the video game aspect when the book is based around a video game. And that’s okay, it just means you aren’t the target audience. But with Missing Pieces, the only relationship that exists with the game is the story base. If we take away the game, it still is a full-body mystery and suspenseful thriller. The game is never acknowledged because the book is inside the game, they share the same world.

So if you have played Hello Neighbor, and the story wasn’t exactly there for you, you need to read this book. If you have no idea what Hello Neighbor is but enjoy reading mystery books, you need to read this book. Or if you have a child, cousin, little brother or sister, that enjoys mysteries and scary neighbours, you need to give them this book and also read it yourself.

This book has brought me more joy than my words can express it. I found my soulmate. The perfect blend between two of my favourite hobbies, books and games. And while the mystery still exists, I will always chase after it.

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