Beware of the Spindlers. If you aren't careful, they will creep into your room at night, steal away your soul, and leave your body full of spindler eggs. 
 So you can probably guess what happens at the beginning of "The Spindlers," Lauren Oliver's second novel for younger (read: not teenage-romance-seeking) readers. It's a clever, fast-paced little fantasy story with echoes of Neil Gaiman's "Coraline" and the classic "Alice in Wonderland, with a darker edge to the whimsy. 
 One morning, Liza wakes up and discovers that her brother Patrick is no longer her brother -- his soul has been stolen by the Spindlers during the night. How does she know? He's BEHAVING. Her parents obviously won't believe her story, so it's up to Liza to set out on a quest to regain his soul -- to venture Below, through a passageway that takes her deep underground. 
 She meets and befriends Mirabelle, an oddball rat who wishes to be human, and soon discovers that Below is a pretty scary place, with many bizarre creatures like troglods, moles, nids, lumpen and... of course, the Spindlers themselves. But when she finally finds the grotesque spiderlike monsters, she may be fighting for her life as well as her brother's soul. 
 Without feeling derivative, "The Spindlers" reminds me of a bunch of other stories -- mostly "Coraline" (for the girl-on-an-adventure and some of the darker moments), "Alice in Wonderland" (the strange down-the-rabbit-hole atmosphere) and the movie "Labyrinth" (for the girl trying to rescue an annoying but beloved baby brother). 
 And considering that Oliver is best known for her dystopian teen romances, "Spindlers" really shows the versatility of her writing. There's a clever, springy quality to her prose, with wry little descriptions and clever ideas (the troglods trade colors as currency). It's a simple story, and a few of the plot twists feel a bit obvious. 
 There is one thing that bothered me, though: we never find out what happened to one of the main characters at the end of the story. But then, the way is left open for a potential sequel. 
 Liza is a plucky, never-say-die heroine who is easy to like, especially since she's such a protective older sister to Patrick -- he annoys her sometimes, but she loves him fiercely. And Mirabella is simply adorable: she's a rat with self-esteem issues because people detest "dirty rats" and hit them with brooms, so she tries to be as human as possible with wigs and hats. 
 "The Spindlers" is a charming, dark little story that shows Lauren Oliver's writing talents beautifully. Recommended for rat-lovers, but not arachnophobes.