Not being listed as a YA novel, this might've worked as just that.

My nostalgia for comic books aside (I'm in my forties, so the eighties reflected in Timmy's time was a few years late and much more lame)the characters resonated with me, and the hardest part of this book for me was not the allusions to Ghoul sex, or the child abuse...it was when Tim's dad destroyed his comic book collection. While I'm diehard DC-maven, it just gutted me to see his pop tearing up his Marvel-centric world.

As an author I employ the method of shoving a chunk of back story into the current narrative, so I wont spit on that--but I know from my own readers that it's an acquired taste, and not all readers like it--sometimes Keene teetered on the edge of losing me with it.

I'm glad I read it, sadly, the Chiller teleplay fell short of the book.