Books like How to Kill a Monster

I stared up into his hideous face - and gasped.His eyes were deep, dark pools - with tiny worms swimming in them!Ew, nasty....Okay, this is a little different from regular Goosebumps books - the monster shows up early, about 55% of the way through the novel.Gretchen and her stepbrother Clark (I think this is the second Goosebumps books where there are divorced parents), are being unceremoniously dropped off at their grandma and grandpa's house in Georgia.They are shocked to find that their grandparents live in an honest to God mansion. A huge, stone mansion in the swamps of rural Georgia. There's no phone. No television. And no car. Grandpa's deaf. And Grandma loves to cook. A lot. So much that it's as if she's cooking for 50 people instead of just 4. Why does she cook so much food?...Honestly, the grandparents in here are HORRIBLE people. Horrible people. For one thing, they are hoarders. They tell the kids - you can explore the house. Anywhere in the house is fair game except for that one locked room. Okay. The kids find rooms packed with 50 years worth of newspapers. In another room they find stacks and stacks of old magazines, and the house appears to be infested with some serious cockroaches. Another room is filled with tons of rusty and broken toys.So. Already not good. Then the kids decide to play hide-and-seek. And while looking for Clark, Gretchen nearly plunges to her death on a staircase that has rotted through. Great - stellar child-care there. Just let your grandchildren run around your junk-filled, rotting-floor house. Brilliant.Then the kids open the locked room (of course they do!) only to find a huge kind of gorilla-alligator monster inside. Now the monster's loose and the kids (and dog - Golden Retriever named Charley) are running through the house for their lives.The grandparents are nowhere to be found. The kids see the grandparents pulling out of the driveway, leaving their grandchildren to their fates. Not to mention, the grandparents have nailed all the windows and doors shut, trapping the children inside the house.Wow. That is really cold.The kids then find two letters taped to the fridge, basically saying "Bye! Off to get help!" Wow, thanks, Grandma....The rest of the book is the kids battling the monster, which is pretty exciting. My favorite part is when they doctor grandma's pie with turpentine, drain cleaner, rat poison and ammonia.Tl;dr - The twist ending is a bit lame, but overall this book was pretty exciting and fast-paced. Definitely these grandparents win the "worst grandparents in history" award. Jeez Louise!