A satisfying fulfillment of classic creepy tropes.
Troubled teens fight monsters.
Riley Kowalski is a classic “final girl”: She’s picked up by a helicopter amid the burning wreckage of an Antarctic research station, the lone survivor among her group of young data collectors. Interrogated by a private security force, she reports a gruesome tale. After applying for this gig via a targeted ad and hoping to break free from her debilitating anxiety, Riley finds herself working with four other teenagers who are also trying to get away from their pasts. The expedition, supposedly designed to collect icebound microplastics, is funded by amoral automotive tech multimillionaire Anton Rusk (any similarities to a real billionaire with a rhyming name are obviously intentional). After strange visions worm their way into the corner of Riley’s vision, one of their adult chaperones becomes infected by a virus, her body elongating and morphing into an eldritch horror, and the fight for their lives begin. The unforgiving setting is automatically fascinating, and the monster is a good, gory, bone-cracking invention. Most characters default to White; one boy is from South Korea, another has brown skin and is gay, and Riley is asexual, but these identities are not developed beyond passing mention. True terror is hamstrung by the often clunky prose, told in a limiting present tense despite most scenes being related after the fact, and hard-to-follow action scenes. Nevertheless, fans of horror will find a lot to enjoy.
A satisfying fulfillment of classic creepy tropes. (Horror. 12-18)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64567-618-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Page Street
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For fans of brooding bad boys and the pastel goth accidental necromancers who love them.
A deaf scholarship student at an occult university is plagued by ghosts.
Delaney Meyers-Petrov is so done with being treated like she’s fragile, but she’s not sure if she can hack it at Howe University, where the interdimensional travel program is mostly White, old-money kids who’ve been training for this their whole lives. Between the school’s lack of accommodations and her own internalized ableism, she is struggling, and her cochlear implant doesn’t help enough for her to keep up. Laney’s grateful for assistance from her (hot, muscular, rude) TA, Colton Price, but he hates her for some reason. Little does Laney know that Colton’s part of an occult boys’ club which plays with the boundary of death itself—a boundary Colton’s already crossed once. Laney, a girl with an extremely deliberate goth-adorable aesthetic, is well served by the purple prose (“the shadow-bitten arch of the doorway,” “suckling on the teat of decay”) and dialogue that wobbles between angst and snark in the style of teen paranormal television. Her unusual necromantic powers make her an irresistible target for the power players at Howe (where every figure with power and authority is male, and her peers and allies are all female), but at least Colton is sexy while he deceives and manipulates her. The worldbuilding is shaky but the romantic agita and ironic wit are present in spades. Most characters default to White.
For fans of brooding bad boys and the pastel goth accidental necromancers who love them. (Paranormal romance. 14-18)Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-80947-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Masterfully modernizing the gothic horror genre, McGinnis outdoes herself.
While one cousin grapples with murder, another seeks revenge in this Edgar Allen Poe–inspired sequel to The Initial Insult (2021).
Picking up where the first novel ended, this duology closer once again follows Tress Montor in mostly White, small-town Amontillado, Ohio. Still looking for answers about her parents’ mysterious disappearance 7 years ago, Tress is also haunted à la “The Tell-Tale Heart” by the murder of Felicity Turnado, whom she entombed alive in the previous entry. Alternating with her first-person narration are chapters from her often taunted cousin, Kermit “Ribbit” Usher. Reminiscent of the title character in Poe’s “Hop-Frog,” Ribbit plans for a deadly revenge against his tormentors as well as a heroic rescue of Felicity and a family-ordered killing. As before, the alternating point-of-view chapters, with taut storytelling, dark twists, and allusions to Poe, effectively play off one another. Reinforcing the converging storylines are interspersed cryptic free-verse poems by Rue, a caged orangutan who lives at the illegal exotic animal attraction owned by Tress’ grandfather. The overall effect this time ups the mystery, intensity, and horror (emphasis on the latter!), with a satisfying ending delivering answers about ongoing family questions and clashes. Readers must be familiar with the first book to fully appreciate this one.
Masterfully modernizing the gothic horror genre, McGinnis outdoes herself. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-298245-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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