Books like Sinister Spiders of Saginaw

Sinister Spiders of Saginaw was a nice bounceback for Johnathan Rand's Michigan Chillers, probably the best book in the series since Aliens Attack Alpena. I especially looked forward to it because the protagonist, thirteen-year-old Leah Warner, is already familiar to those of us who read the author's American Chillers. In the first book of that series, Michigan Mega-Monsters, the main character meets two girls at summer camp: Sandy Johnson (from Mayhem on Mackinac Island, Michigan Chillers book one) and Leah, whose supernatural arachnid powers come in handy against the swamp mutants stalking Camp Willow. Sinister Spiders of Saginaw is Leah's origin story, a high-stakes adventure in which she unwittingly discovers an alien conspiracy to take over the world, a plot only she, her friends, and a few well-positioned allies are capable of thwarting. By the time the drama is finished, Leah will never look at spiders the same way. Readers who suffer from arachnophobia will empathize with Leah's dislike of spiders, but her discomfort elevates to titanic proportions on the day she and her friends Conner and Angela go out searching for Leah's dog, Grumpy, near the old, dark drainage ditch. A maze of tunnels crisscrosses Saginaw underground there, and it turns out that more than water travels through them. A species of gigantic spiders has made its home in the pipe system, spiders vastly larger than anything native to Earth. Hunted down and backed into a corner by one of the creatures, Leah and her friends are shocked to see it change into a humanoid, a boy named Jarred they know from school. Jarred fills them in on the entire incredible story. He is part of an extraterrestrial race called arachno-sapiens, peaceful aliens who fled their planet for Earth to get away from a predatory spider race chasing them. The evil spiders followed the arachno-sapiens and have developed a plan to conquer Earth, first by tainting the water supply with a toxin engineered to turn humans into spiders like them, and second by hatching a secret reserve of egg sacs they've hidden somewhere. With millions of massive, carnivorous spiders crawling over the face of Earth, the end of society as we know it will be at hand. Humanity's only chance is to temporarily shut down Saginaw's water supply and destroy the spiders' eggs, and that responsibility primarily falls to Leah and her friends. How long could even benevolent oversized spiders like the arachno-sapiens walk around in plain sight without causing mass panic? It's a race to save mankind from alien overlords, but at least Leah, Conner, and Angela have the arachno-sapiens on their side. The arachno-sapiens are as big and strong as the hostile aliens, and can fight them on equal terms. As the plot intensifies and danger rises, our three protagonists must place their lives in jeopardy repeatedly, bravely interceding on one another's behalf when the enemy closes in for the kill. That nobility of spirit is the one major advantage Leah and her friends have over the invading arachnids. As Sinister Spiders of Saginaw puts it, "(B)est friends help their best friends. Always." Even when the terror is greater than they could have imagined. Will the arachno-sapiens and their human allies restore order on Earth before most people have any idea how close they were to extinction? Or will the nestling spiders usher in the apocalypse for our modern world? The writing is eccentric and the story structure is extensively similar to other Johnathan Rand juvenile novels, but Sinister Spiders of Saginaw makes better sense than most Michigan Chillers, and there are exciting moments in it. The action at the water plant is fairly unpredictable, wicked spiders and skeptical security men making things difficult for Leah and her cohorts as they work to shut off the city's water. There's also a twist ending along the lines of R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series, and that's rare for Michigan Chillers. But to me, the most agreeable surprise is how the end of this book links to the next. Michigan Chillers ordinarily end with the main character meeting the protagonist of the next book, who begins telling their own scary story. But this time, Leah doesn't meet Josh and Robyn from Mackinaw City Mummies. Instead, she makes the acquaintance of Parker Smith from the Adventure Club, a new book series by Johnathan Rand. That unexpected change of habit is refreshing, as Sinister Spiders of Saginaw is overall, and the author deserves kudos for it. I think I'll give this book the full two stars. It's one of the best Michigan Chillers, so if you love the series, don't miss it.