Cat's Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
If you're North Carolinian and you've been on the internet for long enough, then you have absolutely heard of Rhett & Link. Whether or not you love them is up to your personal tastes, but, all you need to know is, these two are absolute joys to watch and listen to and are sure to brighten your morning, and when I say morning, I mean it. I live on the East Coast (obviously), so when I wake up for work at 7:30 am, their videos are already up and waiting.
Now, they wrote another book a few years back but that was a book on their lives, mixed with advice and such. THIS book, The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek, is an absolutely delightful piece of science fiction and fantasy and is sure to impress anyone looking for a nice mystery set in a place familiar to them. And I say this knowing not everyone that reads it will be from North Carolina, but I'm willing to bet a lot of you know that small town feeling, even if you've only driven through them. That feeling that there's something lurking that you don't want to stick around to figure out what it is. And trust me, yes the people that live in small towns get the same feeling.
But I digress, The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek is more than just a sci-fi fantasy book by YouTubers, something we all know can be an interesting venture. But, with this, I knew they themselves would write it, which, I didn't think they wouldn't, and you can see their voices so clearly in this. I had a bit of apprehension about it, I didn't want it to be terrible. And it was so, so far from it!
As you all may know from the summary, it follows Rex and Leif, two kids heading off to high school, and a girl named Alicia who comes back to the town to visit her grandmother for a grad school project. Their paths collide when Rex and Leif commit an accidental terrible deed and Alicia realizes there's something incredibly sinister happening with the town. Specifically with the school for delinquents that the adults all adore so much.
Decades old mysteries and secrets begin to come unraveled and the town fights back against it, even at the risk of their own friends and family. At the heart of it all is the founder of the school and their town Sheriff, a man who is as mysterious as they come.
I would definitely comp this with Stranger Things and I haven't even directly watched the show myself, but even just watching the trailers, seeing gifsets that have spoiled literally everything, and speaking to people that avidly watch the show, it's so clearly got that same spark. (It's just more interesting to me on every level than the show.) A group of younger kids with an adult in a small town where terrible things start happening which leads to them investigating and uncovering things bigger than them- It's all there.
But, as someone who never plans on watching Stranger Things because it's just, not for me, you don't even have to like Stranger Things to love this book. There's just something wholesome about it, it's full of heart, and very obviously a love letter to North Carolina and her small towns and how they know there's more to them than what people judging them on first sight think. There's also a bit of a nudge to them to catch up, to do better in relation to certain aspects of small towns.
I could yell for hours about how much I loved this book and how much you should read it, but honestly, you shouldn't stop at that. Rhett & Link are doing a short, exclusive book tour for Lost Causes and there are still tickets available! But act quickly because they are almost upon us!
If you're in North Carolina or you want to come to North Carolina to see them, there are a few tickets left for our 6:30 PM show here in Winston-Salem!
And you can get those tickets Right Here!
Each ticket comes with a copy of the book, so essentially, you're paying for the book and just a little extra to see these lovely guys speak about everything to do with the book itself! It's gonna be fun, it's gonna be interesting, and you'll make plenty of friends with the people around you!