THE COVE

When an “atheist Jew from Brooklyn” is expelled from her latest boarding school, her parents send her to “Maine, the WASPiest place on earth,” where she runs afoul of a “deeply creepy island murder cult.”

Seventeen-year-old Lindsay Weinberg isn’t happy to spend the summer engaging in “self-reflection” in “Bumfuck-Nowhere-by-the-Sea, Maine,” with her estranged uncle. Once in the tiny town of Marbury, population 279, Lindsay, who’s bisexual, finds herself trapped at Haven House with “a crucifix-wielding shiksa” who introduces herself as Aunt Irene and a small clutch of other teenagers sent by their parents to work the land, find Jesus, and “return home reformed.” But where is Uncle Levi? Lindsay uneasily starts getting to know her peers: Dalton, “a weird, rich-ass white boy”; Mateo, a gay Latino boy; Gwen, a white girl with a substance use disorder; and Tash, a dark-skinned trans boy with locs. The appearance of uncannily pale siblings Cass and Phin, who live at The Cove, on an island that’s accessible only at low tide, and worship “the Galaxy Goddess” Andromeda, amps up the weirdness. Rose pens an atmospheric horror tale festooned with eerie touches that effectively balance the occasions of out-and-out violence. Less effective is the connective tissue between Aunt Irene’s repellent form of Christianity and the Greek myth of Andromeda. But Lindsay’s trenchant narration—spiky, funny, and thoroughly Jewish—carries readers over this debut’s plot holes.

Deeply creepy indeed.