Shiny Happy People

The teenage years can be hard. You have to worry about dating and friendships and family and things and people changing, growing, and it can feel like everyone is moving on without you and you’re all alone. Sometimes you feel like you may not even recognize your friends as they develop interests apart from you or a new relationship. What happens when the reason you don’t recognize them is because they really aren’t themselves anymore?

Shiny Happy People by Clay McLeod Chapman is a young adult novel that tackles big issues like the opioid crisis, addiction, and Big Pharma along with coming of age themes such as identity, conformity, and change, through the eyes of sixteen year old Kyra.

Kyra starts to notice changes in her brother’s and her friends’ personalities after they take a drug that’s the subject of a viral new social media trend, “spore” - it’s even been turns into a verb, as in “He’s sporing,” or “Spore with me.”
She wants her friends back, but she doesn’t want to rat them out to the adults, and anyway, BoTanic, the big drug company that employs or otherwise funds most of her small town, is likely the source of the new drug which could make speaking out about it tricky.

The new kid in school, Logan, doesn’t seem to be affected, so Kyra turns to him to try to figure out what’s happening and how to stop what’s taking over everyone in town.

Shiny Happy People has all the elements of horror and coming age that put me in mind of some of Stephen King’s works, like The Body (which became the movie Stand By Me), Carrie, or It, but with a relevant, timely sensibility for today’s challenges.

I’m excited about Shiny Happy People because it’s a perfect novel for introducing your older kids - or your horror-averse spouse in my case - to horror that is approachable but still horrifying - and it’s still a lot of fun for us more, let’s call us, “seasoned” horror fans and with all the dark humor we’ve come to expect from Clay Chapman.

Thank you to NetGalley and Delacorte Press for the advance copy for my honest review. Pub. date: 11/11/25

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