The Last Day of October

LoveReading4Kids Says

October 2025 Book of the Month Interest Age 9+ Reading Age 8

With a classic “Nothing much ever happened” around here set-up, Phil Hickes’ The Last Day of October is a treat of haunted Halloween trickery. In this case, the setting is the small town of Column Falls in Oregon, where folks are festooning their front lawns with elaborate displays of spooky graveyards, robotic werewolves, raggedy ghosts and “pumpkins with eerie grins and shining eyes” while three friends, Cody, Dori and Sean, hatch plans for Halloween.   

Cody is set on looking for scares, and so the trio venture to the super-spooky, allegedly haunted McBride House in search of “a real Halloween experience – not just a load of dudes dressed up in costumes with fake fangs and rubber bats.” With the anniversary of the house’s tragic burning on the horizon, the friends wonder whether they might see the ghosts of the children who died in the fire. And so, the trio head to the deep, dark woods that surround the house.  

While it seems as if the house was expecting the friends, what unfolds is an entirely unexpected tale that rises to a gripping, gasp-inducing climax. Written for 9+-year-olds with a reading age of eight, The Last Day of October is also brilliantly inclusive, and sure to satisfy swathes of spooky-story fans as the nights draw in.

Reviewed by Joanne Owen
Joanne Owen is a writer, reviewer and workshop presenter whose lifelong love of books began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, Wales.
More reviews by Joanne Owen

About The Last Day of October

Bored with trick-or-treating, three friends venture into the woods on Halloween night to hunt for the haunted McBride House in this spine-tingling horror story from Phil Hickes.

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