A spooky tale of family trauma.
Haunted families find peace.
Seventeen-year-old Joana Guest is used to feeling like an outsider. Her itinerant father, Jack, moves her and her 13-year-old brother, Peter, around the cities and towns of Vermont, staying in each place for just a short time before they pick up and go again. Jack is plagued by what he calls the Whisperings—voices that only he can hear and that seem to threaten his family. Lured by the prospect of steady handyman work for Jack, the small family moves into the basement of a decrepit Victorian mansion in Burlington that’s owned by the slightly batty Mrs. Cracknell. But they soon learn that the house is as infested with ghosts as their own lives are. Joana begins seeing things, including the spirit of her late mother, who was murdered, and after she suffers a head injury, her father’s ability to see and hear the Whisperings transfers to her. The “ta-tump” of Joana’s heartbeat, mimicked by the tapping of the deathwatch beetles living in the walls of the Guests’ new home, is a recurring motif. The family has to unravel the mystery of the house’s violent past, as well as resolve the unfinished business from their own tragedy. The story is marked by an eerie sense of unreality, as hallucinations and dreams interweave with very real danger, and the on-page gore outweighs more emotionally wrought scares. Most characters are cued white.
A spooky tale of family trauma. (author’s note) (Horror. 14-18)Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9781774881019
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter.
After a Nigerian British girl goes off to an exclusive boarding school that seems to prey on less-privileged students, she discovers there might be some truth behind an urban legend.
Ife Adebola joins the Urban Achievers scholarship program at pricey, high-pressure Nithercott School, arriving shortly after a student called Leon mysteriously disappeared. Gossip says he’s a victim of the glowing-eyed Changing Man who targets the lonely, leaving them changed. Ife doesn’t believe in the myth, but amid the stresses of Nithercott’s competitive, privileged, majority-white environment, where she is constantly reminded of her state school background, she does miss her friends and family. When Malika, a fellow Black scholarship student, disappears and then returns, acting strangely devoid of personality, Ife worries the Changing Man is real—and that she’s next. Ife joins forces with classmate Bijal and Benny, Leon’s younger brother, to uncover the truth about who the Changing Man is and what he wants. Culminating in a detailed, gory, and extended climactic battle, this verbose thriller tempts readers with a nefarious mystery involving racial and class-based violence but never quite lives up to its potential and peters out thematically by its explosive finale. However, this debut offers highly visually evocative and eerie descriptions of characters and events and will appeal to fans of creature horror, social commentary, and dark academia.
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250868138
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Lush, angsty, queer horror.
When the monsters they imagine come to life, two boys fight for their lives—and each other.
Andrew Perrault, who’s from Australia, writes beautiful, macabre fairy tales. His roommate at his American boarding school, Wickwood Academy, is talented artist Thomas Rye, who brings his stories to vivid life in paint and charcoal. Andrew’s twin sister, Dove, is all but ignoring him, so he has plenty of time to focus on Thomas’ increasingly odd behavior. Thomas’ parents disappeared just before the new school year started, and Andrew noticed blood on his roommate’s sleeve on their first day back. When he follows Thomas into the forest one night, Andrew discovers him fighting one of the monsters that Thomas has drawn from these stories. The boys soon find themselves coping with vicious bullies by day and fighting monsters by night. At the same time, Andrew struggles to reconcile his feelings for Thomas with his growing awareness of his own asexuality. But when the sinister Antler King breaches Wickwood’s walls, Andrew realizes that he and Thomas may not survive their own creations. This novel, written in rich, extravagant prose, features frank portrayals of disordered eating, self-harm, bullying, and mental illness. Andrew grapples realistically with his sexual identity, and the story has ample genuinely creepy moments with the monsters. Andrew, Thomas, and Dove are white.
Lush, angsty, queer horror. (content warning) (Horror. 14-18)Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250895660
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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