As a critic of sorts, it is my business to traffic in opinions. As a result, I sometimes encounter people who disagree with my opinions. To steal a line from P.G. Wodehouse, probably most of them have been eaten by bears, but just in case, I regret to inform you that there are those who will take issue with my admiration for Adam Bertocci’s books. The chief complaint I hear from these people is that his books have “too much irony.”

Paraphrasing The Lion in Winter: “We all have too much irony! It’s 2024 and we’re millennials!”

Srsly, people! These books are by and for millennials. Having a book for millennials with no irony would require a trigger warning, at least.

Another thing I’ve heard people say is that the characters are “too self-absorbed.” Well, this is because they are usually young people on journeys of self-discovery.  I feel that most Bertocci characters are less self-absorbed by the end than they were at the beginning. And even if they’re not, the class of books which are called “literary fiction” frequently feature self-absorbed characters, and people fawn over them and heap accolades upon them and force innocent students to read them. Do I even need to say it?

But okay, let’s say you are one who doesn’t like the black cat’s lines at the end of Samantha, 25, on October 31, and are not charmed by the extremely meta dialogue in The Hundred Other Rileys. Well, perhaps this is the Bertocci book for you.

Ex Marks The Spot follows a typical Bertocci protagonist, high school sophomore Darian, who decides to dress up as a pirate for a Halloween party, which she is looking forward to as a way of forgetting about her ex-boyfriend Shane.

Unfortunately, she ends up being forced to take her little brother out for trick-or-treat night instead. And guess who they happen to bump into?

Like all Bertocci’s stories, the prose is witty and the theme is of a young woman finding her way in the world. All of us dedicated Bertoccioids, (whose numbers are swelling by the day) will find all the delights we expect.

But there is a little something different here, too: it captures the warm nostalgia of Halloween in an unapologetically fond way, and more to the point, Darian has to do a little growing up, and is certainly not self-absorbed. She comes into her own as a big sister, and that makes her all the more likable.

It’s got humor, it’s got romance, it’s got magic, it’s got spookiness, and–like Linus’s pumpkin patch–it’s got sincerity. Perhaps it can be the book that will make even the most ardent Bertocci non-enjoyer say cast aside their saber, fight no more, and say, “let there be commerce between us.“