Date: May 30, 2025
Author: Lorelei Savaryn
Title: The Night Train
I was really excited to read this because the author is from my neck of the Northwoods. I was hooked by the start of chapter 1. My first thoughts were; I double dog dare you to read this alone and after dark. I did. I wasn’t scared.
Mz. Savaryn had the setting and buildup to a truly, or even quasi-scary (for the kiddos sake) piece of fiction. I even forgave the hugely unbelievable premise she had set about creating. First of all, it’s incredibly far fetched for how many successions of generations of children that were to be born on 10/31 exactly 13 years apart from each other. Without fail.
The idea behind this story is that there was an evil train conductor that was every 13 years recreating the night of a horrific train accident that had rocked the town long ago. Turns out he was using this event to snatch a fresh body that would disguise who he really was for the next 13 years. Who he was was an evil spirit. His objective? To kidnap, kill and keep captive on the ever-looping dead version of the crashed train these young and innocent newly-turned teenagers. Apparently, his bargain for ever lasting youth was simply a fresh 13-year-old to be sacrificed on the Halloween of every re-enactment. What a birthday celebration this turned out to be. (Insert sarcasm here)
Here is where I struggled. Lucky for the conductor a child just so happened to be born on 10/31, every 13 years, and every 13 years that newest child was tricked into crossing over to the dead version of the train only to never return to the living side. Once they were captured and crossed over then the train would derail, exactly as expected, killing the new blood while conveniently across town another baby was being born to start the cycle yet again. This continued to happen. Every 13 years, to the day. All in a row. All in the same town. The same small town
I trudged along, forgiving the wildly outlandish plot Mz. Savaryn was whipping up and I began picturing this story as some kind of cross between the 6th Sense, (a super scary movie from 1999) mixed with My Teacher Is An Alien, (a fairly scary (for a 9-year-old reader)) children’s book from 1989 mixed with a little Scooby Doo, (you know, the cartoon about the stoner kid with a dog and some friends in a van)
The further I read along into this manuscript the more I felt that hook loosening its grip on me until she lost me right before the end.
I gave this one an extra-better-than-my-best-college-try.