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Paige McKenzie is an Internet juggernaut. The 20-year-old, who lives in rural Oregon about an hour outside Portland, is the face of a YouTube channel that boasts more than 120 million page views. In other words, she generates about three times the traffic of OregonLive.com. And she's done this with more than 1,000 amateurish, Blair Witch-esque videos about an excitable teenager named Sunshine who documents the paranormal activity around her. I spent a lot of time with McKenzie while profiling her last summer ("80 Million Paige Views," WW, July 30, 2014), and I can affirm that while she's less bubbly than her character, she does take "adorkable" as high praise.
For those uninterested in sitting through nearly 40 hours of McKenzie yipping about ghosts, nail polish and her obsession with Audrey Hepburn—and ending nearly every video with her signature "blah!"—there's now a book adaptation. The Haunting of Sunshine Girl (Weinstein Books, 304 pages, $16) is part of a deal with the Weinstein Company that's also slated to include a movie franchise. (That said, it's been nearly a year since the deal was announced, and the movie contracts have yet to be inked.)
The book doesn't inspire much confidence in the film project. An aggressively mediocre piece of YA horror, the novel follows Sunshine as she moves with her mom from sunny Texas to a bleak, rainy town in Washington state—think of it as Forks lite—where they're promptly haunted by a murdered 10-year-old girl and a demonic spirit. Mom starts acting a little strange—think she might be possessed?!—and Sunshine, a misfit with an affinity for grandpa sweaters, antique typewriters and taxidermied owls (#soportlandrightnow), must figure out how to break the curse and save her mother's life. Along the way, she meets a dreamy, shaggy-haired boy named Nolan who wears flannel button-downs and an old leather jacket and whose presence makes her feel hot. Like, literally hot. "Literally" is literally Sunshine's favorite word. It literally appears at least 18 times during the course of the book.
None
of this is particularly creepy or suspenseful—which I don't think is a
matter of me being double the age of the target audience—and it's bogged
down by a plodding tempo and insipid dialogue. (McKenzie shares author
credit with Alyssa Sheinmel, a YA writer whose other books deal with
eating disorders, tragic secrets and rebellious surfer kids.) At points,
I actually found myself yearning for McKenzie's rabidly chipper YouTube
persona. At least in videos she'll drop the occasional "What's up,
bitches?" Here, Sunshine is all "oh gosh" and "good golly." Needless to
say, the relationship with Nolan remains chaste. Which, OK: Ghosts
first, boys second, but then why has Sunshine become such a fraidy cat
in the move from the screen to the page? Blah.
GO: Paige McKenzie reads at Powell's Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 800-878-7323, on Wednesday, March 25. 7 pm. Free.
WWeek 2015