Genre 📚: YA Horror, Thriller, Paranormal
Tropes 💁♀️: Ghostly revenge, haunting/possession
Rep ✔️: Queer main characters
CW ⚠️: Grief, anxiety, agoraphobia, some blood/gore
Rating ⭐️: 3.5/5
As promised, this book is very much Rear Window meets The Ring — but instead of a haunted video tape, it’s haunted livestreams. MC Teresa has confined herself to her room, living with intense anxiety after losing her best friend in an accident, with her only source of comfort being the livestream community. Her life takes a dark turn, however, when she realizes some sort of entity is targeting her favorite streamers.
Teresa goes into full online sleuth mode to try to save these people, and we’re right there with her, reading all the chatrooms, Reddit posts, and of course, scrubbing through hours of streams. It’s a really cool and immersive way to handle the mystery, and it’s totally effective — I was on the edge of my seat, despite most of the setting being one bedroom. Then the ghost gets more active, and things start to feel like a Goosebumps book (in a good way).
I wasn’t a fan of the last-minute romance or the ending, but I gotta give Deadstream props for legitimately spooking me. I read this at nighttime, and I kept getting chills every time I looked down my darkened hallway…
**Much thanks to NetGalley and Viking Children’s Books for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Deadstream will be released on April 1, 2025.
Sara Bechtol 