NO FILTER

Amateur photographer Janessa “Jinx” McCormick makes an eerie discovery through her camera lens.

It’s summer in Greenbelt, Maryland, located just outside Washington, D.C., and 12-year-old Jinx is busy taking photographs for local businesses, various cosplayers, and a friend who wants to break into acting. What starts off as an inexplicable smudge on all the photos she’s taken eventually turns into something much more sinister. Along with the light horror elements, a parallel thread explores Jinx’s mental health while she struggles with OCD in the wake of her father’s death. This struggle is the most powerful part of the novel, more suspenseful and compelling than the spooky elements. Readers will be more curious about what happened to both Jinx’s father and mother and what she’s keeping bottled up in therapy than what’s causing the smudges on her photographs. Jinx is a richly drawn, well-imagined character, mature in many ways and yet somehow still very young. The racially diverse supporting characters who surround Jinx, who reads white, are also well developed; each forms an important piece of the storyline. Though the two plotlines seem to be more parallel than braided together, the insights the book offers into Jinx’s inner thoughts and feelings make this a valuable, interesting read.

An absorbing, well-characterized story for readers seeking something mildly scary.