The Fear

Charlie Higson's The Fear is a zombie horror story for 11 year olds about a boy who leaves the safety of the Tower of London and goes looking for a girl he hasn't seen in a year.

What happens

Every grown-up in this London has caught the sickness. The ones who didn't die now hunt children. DogNut has spent a year living in the Tower with a crowd of other kids, and he's sick of being second in line.

So he's put together a crew of eight and a big old rowing boat. Courtney wants her best friend Brooke back. Little Olivia is looking for her big brother Paul. DogNut is mostly looking for Brooke too (and he's not shy about saying so).

Before they even set off, though, there's DogNut's nightmare. It's the same one every night. A patrol that went wrong, and a boy called Leo he couldn't hold on to. It isn't really a dream at all. It happened, and he blames himself.

That's what this book does so well. These kids are tough and funny and very rude to each other, and underneath they're carrying a LOT. Courtney secretly fancies DogNut and is super hard on herself about her size. Marco and Felix bicker the whole way up the Thames.

The river trip itself is brilliant. Tides and currents, Big Ben sliding past, and a wreck under the water that nobody warned them about! Where they wash up, a very serious red-haired girl called Nicola runs things with votes and a parliament. DogNut can't quite keep a straight face.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

This is proper horror. The nightmare in the first chapter is a basement full of sick adults eating each other, with Leo dragged down among them. It's a memory from a year before the story starts, but it's told in close, horrible detail. Later on two dead bodies float past the boat, and one of them is a little girl.

The language is rough too. There's swearing. One boy calls another "spaz", which is a slur against disabled people (Olivia tells him so straight away), and DogNut uses "gay" as a put-down.

So if your reader frightens easily, or is still finding their feet with scary books, this isn't the one yet. For a confident reader who already loves horror, the friendships are what will keep them turning pages.

What to read next

If they're new to this world, it's best to start at the beginning with The Enemy, the book the whole series is named after. It opens in a supermarket car park, where a little boy is snatched by grown-ups while the bigger kids were meant to be keeping watch.