UNNAMED BONES

A group of teenagers has a terrifying day on a strange new island in the Pacific Northwest.

Sixteen-year-old Harrow has been having a rough time. Even before her dad died under odd and indeterminate circumstances, she was a girl who fell a lot: off trees and also “in and out of love and friendships, off the pedestals—few and far between—I’ve been put on, and out of the grace of the people I needed it from the most.” She lives in the uncanny town of Seeker’s Rest, Washington, which is dubbed “The Last Town on Earth.” An island recently popped up out of the mysterious local lake—the deepest one in the U.S. About nine months before Harrow was born, the lake had suddenly appeared in an equally mysterious valley, which itself just materialized almost a century ago. On a whim, Harrow decides to explore the island; her former best friend, Olive, and classmates Shane and Ethan join her. Their trip quickly turns into a nightmare: The island is inhabited by ominous and dangerous phenomena. Mostly unfolding over one tightly paced day and told in Harrow’s breathless present-tense narration, the book will leave readers shuddering at some of the more gruesome scenes of body horror. In a literary device that creates emotional distance, Harrow describes her personified emotions (Hope, Love, Guilt, Fear), which she keeps locked in a metaphorical motel in her mind until they themselves decide to come out and play.

Spooky and strange.