Reading Challenge: The Saturday Night Ghost Club

Since I’m in the middle of revising my novel and I need to do competitive book research anyway, DIYMFA’s WriterIgniter Reading Challenge has perfect timing!

Writers need to know what recent competitive books are out in the market that are in the same genre or that cover the same themes in our work-in-progress for when we query agents for representation. It helps us give them an idea where they can place our book in the market.

Sounds like oodles of fun, right?

It actually is. First of all, I get to read. Also, I like analyzing stories. It's a great way to put some distance between yourself and your novel because you get see what you've written boiled down to its core. There isn't a one-to-one comparison most of the time, but there is always some way to find common ground.

I didn't think there was going to be a comparable book because of some of the elements I have. My novel is a young adult supernatural thriller about a group of kids set in the 1980s. The closest I could find was Stranger Things and The Goonies, but those are movies. With that in mind, I used the Breadcrumb Technique I learned through DIYMFA to find a handful of comp titles to check out. For this challenge I picked The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson.

The small blurb on the back of the book says, “An irresistible coming-of-age story about a group of misfit kids who spend an unforgettable summer investigating local ghost stories and urban legends.” It’s also set in the ‘80s, too, so really, I’ve hit the jackpot with this pick based on the time period alone.

I can’t wait for the challenge prompts to start rolling in so I can approach this book from a different perspective than I’m used to as a reader. I’m hoping to gain a better understanding how to pitch my novel by doing a deep dive in a comp book with some structure to follow.

Can you tell I was one of those kids that liked school?