Ghouls Gone Wild is the fifth book in the Mostly Ghostly series and here we find Max initially excited about his parents plans to sell their house and move to Texas where his father may have a new job lined up, especially after Nicky & Tara (his two live in ghost friends) get him into hot water by dunking the Mayor in the school swimming pool...on camera even. We discover (through Nicky and Tara) that there is a Ghoul (or two) running amok in the house and it's Nicky and Tara who find an old spell book and tell Max that they'll take care of it. When he realizes what great friends they are trying to be, Max knows he must do something about his parent's plan to sell the house...if you want to find out more about the Ghouls and if Max manages to succeed in sabotaging his parents, you'll have to read the book!

Overall, it's about the same as the previous in terms of what I like and dislike about this series. Max's brother is still an overbearing bully who is physically abusive (this goes beyond brotherly razzing in my opinion and I'm not all that fond of this aspect of the series), his father is also a bully, prizing brawn over brains who is generally permissive of the brothers abuse and verbally abusive himself, the mom is not much more than a doormat in these tales. Despite this, Max's character generally shines despite his clumsiness, his "helpful" ghost friends, and his torment at the hands of his brother...that is to say that he generally does the right thing and doesn't dwell on the negative things in life, and that in itself is a positive message for kids, that and the ever present message that friends (dead or alive) are always the most important thing...that you should always be ther for them!

As for the story...it's interesting, but I get the feeling that this was more exposition for a later volume as the story was short on the details of the Ghouls (with reason), the whole thing just felt like one big build up for something that didn't happen in THIS story, so it should be interesting to see where the next ones goes. This wasn't particularly scary...it also wasn't gory or even mildly creepy. My main question is what's up with the shadowy figure in black...I was left with the feeling that the ONLY reason to read this is to have the filler for something that's going to happen down the line. I give it a C-...there wasn't a whole lot going on here...and what was going on wasn't terribly frightening. ( )