Allie’s a smart, strong and compelling heroine, and readers will gladly join her for this adrenaline-rich ride.
Meet 17-year-old Allie Sekemoto, a reluctant vampire struggling to hold on to her humanity and stave off the demon that lies in wait, thinly veiled beneath the surface of her undead skin.
Over a half century after a plague has decimated the human race, vampires reign, and humans are little more than “blood bags” to serve their masters. Rabids, vicious hybrid creatures born of the plague, prowl the land beyond the walled vampire cities, eager for human prey. When Allie is savagely attacked by a rabid while scavenging for food, a mysterious vampire offers her the choice of a human death or “life” as a vampire. Ultimately forced to flee both the only city she’s ever known and her maker, Allie’s determination to remain more human than monster is put to the test, particularly when she joins a band of humans on a desperate journey to safety on the island of Eden. Particularly when she falls in love. Kagawa has done the seemingly impossible and written a vampire book, the first in a planned series, that feels fresh in an otherwise crowded genre. She mixes paranormal and dystopian tropes to good effect, creating a world that will appeal across audiences.
Allie’s a smart, strong and compelling heroine, and readers will gladly join her for this adrenaline-rich ride. (Paranormal/dystopian romance. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-373-21051-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
PROFILES
A mild but satisfying blend of folk and psychological horror.
A young woman reckons with the consequences of being an outcast and the risks of defining her own truth.
Stuck in the dead-end Appalachian town of Winston, Pennsylvania, 17-year-old Leah has few plans and little hope for her future. Having to watch over Owen, the baby brother everyone fawns over, only fuels her frustration. When Owen goes missing from his crib while under her watch, Leah is forced to confront the dangers of the nearby woods. She takes responsibility for what happened, repeating self-recriminations that at times slow the pace, and enters the home of the mysterious Lord of the Wood, a feared otherworldly entity responsible for generations of missing children. Despite her lifetime of indoctrination with town lore warning against the perils of anything to do with the Lord, Leah proposes a bargain in exchange for Owen’s safe return—but failure would come at a steep price. The more time Leah spends away from home, the more she’s drawn to all she was raised to fear as she aims to redress the wrongs of Winston’s lost kids in a slow-burn, supernatural interrogation of what it means to be a “good girl.” Bovalino explores how young women attempt to balance social pressures and desire, and the result delivers slightly more suspense than terror. Leah reads white; there are brown-skinned supporting characters.
A mild but satisfying blend of folk and psychological horror. (content warnings) (Horror. 14-18)Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781645679301
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Page Street
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
In characteristic style, the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy delves into the stuff of nightmares for an existential...
Seth, not yet 17, walks into the Pacific Ocean and ends his life. Or does he?
He wakes, groggy, in front of the house in England where he spent his childhood, before his little brother, Owen, was kidnapped and the family moved to America. He spends days in a dust-covered, desolate landscape scavenging for food in empty stores, imagining that he’s in a “hell built exactly for him.” His dreams are filled with vivid memories of his life: his romance with a boy named Gudmund, a photo that’s gone viral, and farther back, his inability to keep Owen safe. Seth is rescued by a girl named Regine and Tomasz, a younger, Polish boy, from pursuit by a silent, helmeted figure they call the Driver. Past and present collide as Seth struggles to determine what’s real and what isn’t, whether circumstances are all of his own doing. He faces doorways everywhere, with genuine death seemingly just beyond, but there are hints of something even more sinister going on. There are no easy answers either for Seth or readers. With a nod to Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Ness brilliantly plays with contrasts: life and death, privacy and exposure, guilt and innocence.
In characteristic style, the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy delves into the stuff of nightmares for an existential exploration of the human psyche. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6258-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
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