![]() Gabler, all of whom serve as foils for Esther’s emotional growth as she learns to see past the surface. Esther is joined in her fight against the Halloween Queen (who has sent the adults into a magical Dream and stolen the children) by Agustín Korean American Christian bully Sasha and seemingly boring, default White dentist Mr. Fink, of Welcome to Night Vale podcast fame, tries to do a lot with his creepy premise, but heavy-handed, meaning-laden passages-for example, digressions about neighbors as Esther and friends flee through yards chased by a villain flinging razor-bristling apples-slow the pace to a crawl and leave little for the reader to discover. But when the Queen of Halloween freezes their neighborhood in permanent Halloween, Esther finds herself reconsidering the value of forward momentum. She’s also not ready to move on to high school or to do anything about her feelings for her best friend, Agustín, whose name may cue him as Latinx. Halloween-loving Esther, who is implied Ashkenazi Jewish and White, has had her bat mitzvah, which makes her an adult in religious terms, but she’s not ready to let go of trick-or-treating, even when her parents say otherwise. Sometimes the scariest thing is growing up.
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