Grave Doubts

Shockers Series

by John Peel, Stephen Brennan

Haunted by nightmares about the brutal murder of his older sister Penny, Matt Howard is confronted by a mysterious girl who wanders around the local graveyard, claiming that she is Penny and seeking revenge for her death.

Genres: Horror

Paperback

Published June 23, 1993

About the author

John Peel is the author of Doctor Who books and comic strips. Notably, he wrote the first original Doctor Who novel, Timewyrm: Genesys, to launch the Virgin New Adventures line. In the early 1990s he was commissioned by Target Books to write novelisations of several key Terry Nation Dalek stories of the 1960s after the rights were finally worked out. He later wrote several more original Daleks novels.

He has the distinction of being one of only three authors credited on a Target novelisation who had not either written a story for the TV series or been a part of the production team (the others were Nigel Robinson and Alison Bingeman).

Outside of Doctor Who, Peel has also written novels for the Star Trek franchise. Under the pseudonym "John Vincent", he wrote novelisations based upon episodes of the 1990s TV series James Bond Jr..

Reviews

[Grace Chan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty dang dark for a kids book. Kids die, and uhh there's illustrations of the kids being unalived 😅
A kids book for future sickos. A fun quick read, and yes I was a little SHOCKED by what happens at the end 💀

[Madame Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew is caught in a mystery of who killed his sister and who is the haunting girl stalking him. The illustrations were cool.

[Siyoung Yoo · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's good, with a storyline of a boy named Matt trying to find out what happened to his dead sister, and the ending was well-written, but it felt like something was missing from this book. I'm not sure.
Still, other than that, this was a VERY amusing book! Well-written, well-organized! And thrilling!!

[Erica Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Repressed memories, sibling rivalry, and revenge. Surprisingly violent for a middle grade horror. Not exactly ~SHOCKING but it does deliver a few twists that are sort of satisfying.

[Charity · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book when I was a kid and it has stuck with me since. One of the better books I read as a child and was surprisingly dark for a book written for kids.

[BRANDON · Rating 4 out of 5]

All of Peel's Shockers series have been a little bit quirky, just off the wall plotting. I'm not always wild about twist endings, but Peel does do a good job of laying the groundwork so that his twists make sense. I'm not sure these books would have been published in today's market, but publishers were hungry for YA and MG horror to compete with Point and the eventual monolith that would become R. L. Stine.

[Evelynnm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked it up and I just couldn’t put it down. Finished in one sitting maybe an hour and a half. A nice quick read. Read back in maybe the eighth grade. I couldn’t remember the twist, but I knew there was one coming. I enjoyed the violent imagery for such a short fun shocking little read. Bonus; The art is pretty cool style and added to the vibes!

[Hannah Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought that this book was very interesting, it follows a boy named Matt who doesn't really get along with his parents and gets in a lot of fights in school. Matt doesn't remember the traumatic experience he had with his sister's death, when he visits her grave one day he bumps into a girl who looks exactly like his sister in the photo album his parents had and discovers she is in fact his sister reincarnated. After the encounter Matt starts to have bad dreams and starts to remember things about his sister's death. He starts to realize that his sister Penny wasn't really the angelic little girl that everyone thought she was. John Peel created a great book that is filled with twists and turns galore. And the ending makes you want more...

[Harley Bennett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Matt Howard was four years old when his eleven year-old sister was killed. He had forgotten the details, but they start coming back to him in nightmares ten years later. Then he meets Penny Gillis who looks just like his sister. Penny claims that she is the reincarnation of his sister. She wants to help him remember what happened.
The story starts out well and will keep the reader interested. However, I felt like it started to go downhill when Matt shifted into his "how stupid can I be" mode. This begins when he decides to visit Penny at her house. I did not like the ending but the epilogue did redeem the story a little.

[Julianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

A simple read. I read it in and forty minutes. It's a fun little story with a shocker at the end that you'd never expect.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember reading this book in 4th or 5th grade and loving it so much, even though it scared me so much. I'm tempted to read it again....if I dare.