ANNIKA ROSE

A coming-of-age tale combined with a pastoral horror story.

Annika Rose Rogers graduates from high school with no real prospects for the future other than working alongside her father on their tiny plot of land in northern Minnesota. Though Annika was once content with the quiet, parsimonious existence she found living in the family trailer in the wake of her mother’s death, her life is upended when a young couple moves into the once-abandoned house down the road. The new neighbors, Tina and Jesse, have moved to this remote town so Jesse can focus on his music, but something is off about the couple and their eerie house. They welcome Annika and her father into their lives, but soon Tina’s strange combination of worldliness, helplessness, and isolation kicks off a strange rivalry between father and daughter. When the school principal, himself a fish out of water, starts coming around to Tina and Jesse’s house, tensions among all parties start to rise, particularly when an itinerant woman who lives in the woods accuses him of some dark behavior. A surprise pregnancy throws the whole not-entirely-likable cast of characters into an uproar. Annika’s naïveté means readers are left seeking answers after the unsettling ending, but she sees enough of the truth to recognize that adulthood may be far different than she previously imagined. The result is a story that feels as if Rosemary’s Baby was set against the desolate landscape of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

Coming-of-age stories are common, but this book’s off-putting characters and discomfiting conclusion offer a unique twist.