I received a digital ARC from the publisher via NetGalley for review. 
 Video version of this review here: https://youtu.be/uTAK0a8981s 
 The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding may not be truly bad enough to warrant such a low rating, but it committed the sin of seeming like it was going to be way more interesting than it actually turned out to be, and I could never quite forgive it. Besides, there were a variety of things Bracken did here that annoyed me. 
 But where do we start? Young Prosper Redding seems to be the singular failure of the illustrious Redding clan of Redhood, the New England town that bears their name, and over which their family has lorded for generations. Redhood is both familiar and bizarre, with odd traditions connected the the Redding family history, a town under the thrall of Prosper's terrifying and all-powerful grandmother. It would have made a wonderful, unique setting for a middle grade urban fantasy novel, and these initial chapters feel laced with ominous fairy tale. Unfortunately, most of the book does not actually take place in Redhood, and maybe I was reading too much into the perceived fairy tale references, because they ceased to crop up as soon as we left Redhood as well. 
 After a bizarre and occult incident at the ancestral Redding home, Prosper is whisked away to... wait for it... Salem (of course), where a man who introduces himself as long-lost Uncle Barnabus promises to keep Prosper safe from his maniacal grandmother and help him exorcise the demon that long-ago Honor Redding made a deal with, which is now living inside of Prosper. There's an info-dump about the demon world, other worlds, and all things magical (The Big Reveal that Magic Exists is one of my least favorite fantasy tropes ever, by the way). Prosper, now struggling for control over his body and mind with the demon Alastor, starts to attend school with Uncle B's estranged daughter Nell, who inherited witch powers from her late mother. But without the Redding legacy looming over him, or his history as a failure, Prosper starts to succeed at school like he never has at home. It's Nell who's the social outcast here, and Prosper is determined to help her, since he's been there too. 
 Meanwhile, there's a bat-winged kitten, a haunted house attraction where the spooks are 95% fake, the obligatory school production of The Crucible (though I did appreciate that the casting controversy was about whether or not Nell should be allowed to audition for the male lead), and the even-more-obligatory surprise monster attacks. You get the picture. Suddenly all the originality that had gotten me excited in the first couple of chapters was gone, and I mourned its loss. And the attempt to turn the Prosper/Alastor relationship into a supernatural buddy comedy was really unconvincing for me. 
 Now, I think I have to address the cliffhanger ending (no spoilers here, though). Full disclosure: cliffhangers usually work on me. And by "work" I mean that they make me want to read the next book *more* than I otherwise would have. I went into this book not knowing whether or not it would stand alone (Goodreads lists it as the first in a series, but that can mean any number of things, and no description I could find was clarifying). So without the positive knowledge that this would be the first in a multi-volume story, I was falsely lulled by the elements of this book that FEEL LIKE THEY BELONG TO A STANDALONE. 
 What draws me through the multi-book story arc is ultimately the characters. I love first books in series, because they introduce me to protagonists who have so far to go on their journeys, and make me care deeply about where they're coming from. The real heart of The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding, where it actually has emotional weight, is in Prosper's growing confidence in his own abilities and in his friendship with Nell. But all of it feels like a standalone story that would have reached its natural conclusion by the end of the book except for the intrusion of all of this over-complicated magic intrigue stuff that I couldn't really bring myself to care about. The character development was good, just not on a scale that I felt would justify a full series following the adventures of Prosper and Nell. Right up until the end, I expected one more sequence of revelations and an epilogue to tie the whole thing up, and only after stumbling off the cliff of the final chapter did I look back and realize how much PLOT Bracken had started to build up for a series. Plot that I didn't care about and hadn't been paying much attention to. 
 Finally, it seems important to mention that The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding is a decidedly seasonal Halloween read. So many of the trappings of the story seem like they came straight from your local Halloween pop-up shop that, like said shop, I can't imagine this book having much appeal at any other time of the year. So if you're looking for a Halloween read for the kids, by all means this will do the job, but it wasn't what I was hoping for. 
 P.S. One more pet peeve... I can't stand it when authors have characters speaking in Shakespearean-era English, but can't be bothered to get it RIGHT, or make it convincing. I wanted to fly at all of Alastor's early dialogue with a big red marker and just re-write it, but I was reading on my Kindle, so I couldn't.