SHE MADE HERSELF A MONSTER

Blood, witches, curses, and monsters haunt the residents of an Eastern European village.

Yana, a self-proclaimed vampire hunter like her late mother, knows that "every village is haunted in its own way," so she travels between them, making her living by "banish[ing] something without form," freeing people from their various troubles. When she arrives in Koprivci, it’s clear the village needs her help; very few children survive to adulthood here, and Nina, the blacksmith’s pregnant widow, is being persecuted as a witch. Meanwhile, Kiril returns to Koprivci from the city, where he studied medicine under a surgeon in the hopes of bringing aid to the village, but he’s upset to learn that his beloved, Margarita, is set to marry his best friend, Simeon. His orphaned cousin Anka, who was raised alongside him by his uncle the Captain, is less than thrilled to see him home, having felt betrayed by his departure. She’s fighting to hide her menstruation from the Captain, who’s determined to marry her as soon as she bleeds, seeing in her her dead mother, his lost love. Kovatcheva excels when facing unpleasant details head-on, launching into descriptions of "earth…warm with a cloying, unwashed sweetness," and a spirit "peel[ing] itself like a hangnail from the dark." The villagers at large play a crucial role in this novel, with so many stakes wrapped up in their opinions, their perceptions of every person and event, as each of them molds the narrative, claiming "their piece of the story." Though Yana insists that people need monsters, people themselves prove monstrous; how far is anyone willing to go to get out from under the thumb of abuse?

A tale of dark humanity that sticks like a brick in the mouth.