Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

It's 1992 in Bleak Creek, North Carolina, a sleepy little place with all the trappings of an ordinary Southern town- two Baptist churches, friendly smiles coupled with silent judgments, and a seemingly unquenchable appetite for pork products. Beneath the town's cheerful fa ade, however, Bleak Creek teens live in constant fear of being sent to The Whitewood School, a local reformatory with a record of putting unruly teens back on the straight and narrow-a record so impeccable that almost everyone is willing to ignore the mysterious deaths that have occurred there over the past decade.

At first, high school freshmen Rex McClendon and Leif Nelson believe what they've been told-that the students' strange demises were all tragic accidents. But when the shoot for their low-budget horror masterpiece, PolterDog, goes horribly awry-and their best friend, Alicia Boykins, is sent to Whitewood as punishment-Rex and Leif are forced to question everything they know about their unassuming hometown and its cherished school for delinquents.

Eager to rescue their friend, Rex and Leif pair up with recent NYU film school grad Janine Blitstein to begin piecing together the unsettling truth of the school and its mysterious founder, Wayne Whitewood. What they find, with Alicia's life hanging in the balance, will leave them battling an evil beyond their wildest teenage imaginations-one that will shake Bleak Creek to its core.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

The boy raced through the woods, blood streaming from his hand. He was growing faint. Can't pass out. Just gotta make it to the fence. He heard his pursuers yelling. They sounded as panicked as he felt. He didn't know if the dizziness was due to blood loss or the shock of what had just happened. They were gonna kill me. He'd known this place was twisted from day one, when they'd stripped him of everything, including his own name. But even with all the bizarre, disturbing things he'd seen, he had still assumed that the brutal punishments were designed to intimidate. Not exterminate. That's why he'd been so calm, willingly letting them guide him along blindfolded and gagged, right up until the moment they'd sliced his palm. What if this particular test was no different? Maybe he was doing exactly what they wanted him to, running through the trees like a trophy animal. They had only cut his hand. No arteries. Plus, he'd surprised himself, getting away from the two men holding him, one of them enormous, much bigger than any of the adults he'd seen there. Had they purposely let him go? No, he shouldn't sell himself short. He'd fought like hell. The boy felt a flash of pride. All those hours of memorizing Jean-Claude Van Damme's moves had been worth it. Can't wait to rewatch Kickboxer . He couldn't move at a full clip, as branches, rocks, and logs snuck up on him in the meager moon light. He dodged the obstacles, hoping he was heading in a straight line. Where's the damn fence? He saw it just before he collided with it, the grass of the pasture on the other side of the chain links glowing a dull gray under the night sky. He started to climb without thinking, pain exploding as the metal wire slipped into his open wound. He stifled a scream, hoping to conceal his exact point of escape. While clenching his jaw to summon the resolve to hoist himself up the ten foot barrier, he saw it: a cut section of fence not five steps away. Lucky. As he pushed his way through the flap and stood up in the pasture, he heard the roar of an engine to his left. A pickup truck was hurtling across the pasture in his direction. They were trying to head him off. He broke into a sprint toward the cover of trees on the side of the pasture, seeing his own shadow in front of him as the headlights shone on his back. He was confident in his speed. Ninety-ninth percentile in the President's Challenge Shuttle Run. He'd timed himself. But they were closing the distance fast. Get to the treeline. He knew there'd be a barbed wire cow fence at the edge of the field. He'd have to clear it in stride. In only a matter of seconds, they were upon him. He was steps from the trees. The headlights lit up the short fence, helping him judge his distance. He stutter-stepped to setup his leap, then threw his lead leg in the air. A clean jump. He heard the truck skid to a stop on the wet grass behind him, the doors opening. Men screaming. He knew this stretch of forest well; there was barely a patch of nature around town he hadn't explored on his own. Another hundred feet or so and he'd make it to the clearing. He broke into the wide lane cut through the forest, a grassy corridor that followed the sewage line to the water treatment plant. He heard the men clumsily moving through the woods, crashing into branches and grumbling to themselves. Morons. Randomly choosing a direction, he dashed down the clearing, reaching a manhole in less than fifty steps. He grabbed a nearby stick and jammed it into the notch on the cover, just as he'd done a thousand times before, no longer thinking about his throbbing hand. The weighty metal disc lifted, at which point he grabbed the underside and raised the lid on its edge, releasing an acrid smell. He swiftly stepped down into the rank darkness below, skittering down the iron rungs as fast as he could. The disheveled men popped out of the trees ten seconds after he'd dropped the manhole cover in place. The boy listened as their cursing voices passed him. He waited until he could no longer hear them, and then sat for another five minutes. He hoisted the cover, emerging into the muggy night air. The boy fled deeper into the woods. Excerpted from The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek: A Novel by Rhett McLaughlin, Link Neal All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Booklist Review

McLaughlin and Neal, comedy duo and hosts of the popular YouTube channel Good Mythical Morning, try their hand at traditional fiction in this campy, coming-of-age horror tale. Rex, Leif, and Alicia are rebellious teens enjoying the summer before their freshmen year in the small North Carolina town of Bleak Creek, when an unfortunate accident at a town barbecue results in Alicia being sent to the Whitewood Reformatory School. The school, lauded by the folks of Bleak Creek for putting unruly children on the straight and narrow, also has a dark history of accidental student deaths. Eager to free their friend from her imprisonment, Rex and Leif, with the help of an NYU film grad visiting her grandmother, begin to unravel the mysteries of the cult-like school. Brimming with 1990s cultural references ranging from New Kids on the Block to Hypercolor t-shirts, the story is funny, spooky, and at times terrifying. Offer to readers who enjoy horror with twists and terror, but lacking blood and gore, or fans of shows like Stranger Things.--Craig Clark Copyright 2010 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Comedy duo and YouTube superstars McLaughlin and Neal (Rhett Link's Book of Mythicality, 2017) craft a novel about things that go bump in the night.Stranger Things carries a lot of cultural weight by itself these daysthe legacy of Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, and the many weird movies and books that don't get the credit they deservebut these comedy writers have hit that vein hard with this VHS-era kicker that references the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Kickboxer on the very first page. This is Bleak Creek, North Carolina, circa the early 1990s. We have three buddies, natch: Rex McClendon, whose dad owns a funeral home; his bestie, Lief Nelson; and their mutual crush, Alicia Boykins. They're making PolterDog, an indie movie, because why not? Anyone who grew up in this era will be delighted by all the pop-culture references, from Goodfellas to Smokey and the Bandit. Of course, we need some reasonable adults around to help, too, so we get Janine Blitstein, a filmmaker just graduated from NYU film school, and her cousin Donna Lowe. Things get creepy in a hurry when Alicia is banished because of "bad behavior" to a local private school called Whitewood, founded in 1979. The big bad here is Wayne Whitewood, head of the school where every student is robbed of an identity and known only as "Candidatus"Whitewood is the so-named "Keeper," assisted by the Nurse Ratched-esque "Helper." All the students are threatened at every turn by torture, most commonly "The Roll," in which they're confined in a carpet for days on end. Of course, there's a rescue mission, but because we're in that Stephen King territory, there are also a bunch of supernatural threats, including a cursed spring and something known only as "The One Below."Sure, it's kind of a rip-off, but it's scary, it's fun, and it's one hell of a carnival ride. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.