IT WAITS IN THE FOREST

A young woman attempts to use the gifts from her mother to determine what’s real and what’s imagined as she searches for her father’s killer.

Selina DaSilva is an 18-year-old girl living on the Caribbean island of St. Virgil. Her mother, a spiritualist, worked in tandem with her father, a forensics investigator, to solve crimes in their small town. Selina’s mother’s intuition led to the release of a man the townspeople believed to be guilty of murdering a woman. After his acquittal, Selina’s father was killed, and her mother ended up in a coma. Selina is surviving by selling “fake spells and charms” in her friend’s mystic curiosity shop. She’s beginning to have troubling visions of her father when a suspect in a brutal death at a local hotel visits the shop. Selina partners with Gabriel, her ex-boyfriend, to try to figure out if the murder is connected to what happened to her parents. This wonderfully atmospheric story will keep readers on their toes. The shades of horror are artfully done and add just the right amount of tension to this enjoyable read. The protagonist’s struggle to believe in the other world in which her mother existed so easily sets up an interesting character study. The characters are predominantly Black or multiracial.

A heart-racing tale of Caribbean folklore, herbalism, and mysticism.