Literary, scary, and made to read with all the lights on.
Cora, Mimi, and Roger are back—back at Bryers Guerdon and in for another dose of mysterious, creeping horror in Barraclough’s follow-up to Long Lankin (2012).
Four years after the defeat of the centuries-old monster Cain Lankin, Cora and Mimi’s dad has finally gotten them their inheritance: Auntie Ida’s ramshackle mansion, their ancestral home. He’s moved the girls and his girlfriend in before taking off back to what seems to be a life of petty crime. But nearly 400 years earlier, the witch Aphra Rushes cursed the Guerdons, and the return of the girls, the last of the family line, has awakened her malevolent spirit. Barraclough’s writing crackles with tension, horror eked out amid dozens of period details vividly evoking rural 1960s England. Cora, now 15, is again the main character, sharing first-person narration with Aphra’s spirit (whose back story fills the first 70 pages) and still-stalwart Roger. A true sequel, written for the already initiated, this never truly recaps the first volume but instead builds on it, even acknowledging the way the experience with Cain Lankin changed the children, particularly Mimi and Pete, Roger’s nightmare-plagued brother. Convenient adults with stores of mystical knowledge and some inconsistencies of pacing can’t detract from the creeping need to stay up all night hoping for a happy end.
Literary, scary, and made to read with all the lights on. (Historical fantasy/horror. 12 & up)Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7864-7
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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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