A strange but enrapturing read that may leave teenagers (and some adults) anticipating the next installment.
In Winn’s debut paranormal YA romance, a demonic force haunts a 16-year-old and threatens to destroy everyone she loves.
In the story’s opening scene, Mason “May” Krieg; her boyfriend, Cay; and the school heartthrob, Jack, are attempting to fulfill a school assignment by verifying local legends of graveyard hauntings and satanic rituals. The trio’s ghost hunt becomes real when Mason falls down a mine shaft, and an indistinguishable dark force knocks her unconscious. After she returns home from the nightmarish ordeal, the shadowy presence, which turns out to be a demon, continues to haunt her. To add insult to Mason’s injury, Cay confesses a secret that ends their relationship. However, Mason, like most heroines of this genre, is still desired by nearly every young man she meets. She’s a self-described “drama-dance nerd,” and what she lacks in conventional popularity and designer clothes, she makes up for with her sassy intelligence. As a result, she not only has to contend with a demon, but also with the leering advances of every male classmate. Several plot twists come Mason’s way, and she weathers the challenges with remarkable, if sometimes unbelievable, maturity. Like Stephenie Meyer’s Bella Swan, she’s unwittingly thrown into a paranormal conflict, and like Stephen King’s Carrie, she possesses frightening supernatural power within herself. Things become truly bizarre, though, when the demon, a Fabio-like being with leather pants and luxurious long hair, begins haunting her with sexually charged dreams. Readers may find the love-hate romance between Mason and sensitive jock Jack to be a guilty pleasure, even if it’s sometimes a little clichéd. That said, this novel isn’t recommended for younger teens, as it contains scenes of rape and violence. Other readers, however, will eagerly accept this fast-paced story of biblical demons and teenage lust.
A strange but enrapturing read that may leave teenagers (and some adults) anticipating the next installment.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1502827869
Page Count: 244
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end.
Riggs spins a gothic tale of strangely gifted children and the monsters that pursue them from a set of eerie, old trick photographs.
The brutal murder of his grandfather and a glimpse of a man with a mouth full of tentacles prompts months of nightmares and psychotherapy for 15-year-old Jacob, followed by a visit to a remote Welsh island where, his grandfather had always claimed, there lived children who could fly, lift boulders and display like weird abilities. The stories turn out to be true—but Jacob discovers that he has unwittingly exposed the sheltered “peculiar spirits” (of which he turns out to be one) and their werefalcon protector to a murderous hollowgast and its shape-changing servant wight. The interspersed photographs—gathered at flea markets and from collectors—nearly all seem to have been created in the late 19th or early 20th centuries and generally feature stone-faced figures, mostly children, in inscrutable costumes and situations. They are seen floating in the air, posing with a disreputable-looking Santa, covered in bees, dressed in rags and kneeling on a bomb, among other surreal images. Though Jacob’s overdeveloped back story gives the tale a slow start, the pictures add an eldritch element from the early going, and along with creepy bad guys, the author tucks in suspenseful chases and splashes of gore as he goes. He also whirls a major storm, flying bullets and a time loop into a wild climax that leaves Jacob poised for the sequel.
A trilogy opener both rich and strange, if heavy at the front end. (Horror/fantasy. 12-14)Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59474-476-1
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Hold tight: You’ll want to stay on this nightmarish roller coaster till the end.
Trapped in an apocalyptic theme park, teens fight back.
Jay has it pretty good, all things considered, in a not-too-distant future absolutely ravaged by droughts, fires, floods, and powder-keg instability. He and his family are live-in employees of Karloff Country, a mountaintop in Virginia taken over by a billionaire family who created their own version of Disneyland as a refuge for their similarly wealthy peers to cavort away from the destruction they helped create. But when the end times loom, Jay realizes that the new guests, the Trustees, are privileged to the point of sociopathy, torturing staff over perceived slights with impunity. Jay rebels along with fellow Karloff Academy seniors Zeke and Connie and Seychelle, his crush and an heir to the Karloff fortune (Chelle’s racist grandfather, Franklin Karloff, hasn’t gotten over her White mom’s having had a biracial Black baby). They’re all fast friends; “the Black kids always find each other.” Narrated through multiple points of view, the novel features Jay’s perspective most prominently, with some interludes from his friends, all presented in Giles’ signature strong, accessible voice. With hints of Cory Doctorow, Jordan Peele, and Richard Matheson, this book stands on its own as a dystopian adventure, but the deeper metaphors around servitude, privilege, class, and solidarity mean that there’s a lot to think about as the characters reckon with their proximity to and complicity in violence both local and far-flung.
Hold tight: You’ll want to stay on this nightmarish roller coaster till the end. (Horror. 13-18)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-75201-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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