My Cultural Diet

Mister Magic was a beloved children’s program that ran for years until a tragic accident forced it to go off the air. Strangely enough, nobody can actually find any evidence of its existence now. That all promises to change, though, when the surviving cast members reunite for a podcast (and maybe even a potential reboot). Once the closest of friends, the cast members have all drifted apart, meaning their reunion is far from ideal. And for one cast member in particular, the reunion threatens to unlock secrets from her childhood — secrets that hint at a great darkness lurking behind Mister Magic. Kiersten White’s 2023 horror novel popped up in my social media algorithms one day, and I was immediately intrigued by its premise. And while its premise is intriguing, White’s story about the dangers of nostalgia, the innocence of childhood, the pains of growing up, and the evils of religious indoctrination — the novel was inspired by White’s own deconversion from Mormonism — grows thin and repetitive, its characters little more than tropes. To her credit, White does occasionally conjure up an eerie mood. Unfortunately, Mister Magic is nowhere near as creepy or affecting as the critics (and social media algorithms) would have you believe, and by the end, it’s almost as preachy as the religious fundamentalism that it so strongly decries.

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