A flimsy story about vampires and chosen family.
Everything changes for Emma Hartfield after she dies, awakens as a vampire, and learns the dark history of her family.
Seventeen-year-old Emma, who was raised by her grandmother Flora, has always been a loner who has felt darkness inside her. After she’s attacked by a vampire, Emma suddenly has enhanced powers of perception and a craving for blood. Flora is oddly unsurprised by this turn of events but sets out with a promise to get more information about what’s going on. Then Cara, a different vampire, shows up and opens Emma’s eyes to the (literally) underground world of vampires and the ongoing struggle between the Immortals and the half-bloods. Emma starts developing real friendships with the vampires in the nest she joins, and they team up to rescue Flora, who has gone missing. But when the truth about her biological family comes to light, Emma will have to decide where her loyalties lie. The action-forward story combines tried-and-true vampire lore with some new twists. However, worldbuilding elements are often plopped into the story rather than being naturally woven in, and the descriptions feel too slight to make it fully engrossing. A romance subplot isn’t given enough time to be believably built up. Readers may relate to Emma’s questions surrounding family and belonging, but because so many characters are one-note, it’s hard to become truly invested. Emma is cued White; some racial diversity of secondary characters is implied.
A flimsy story about vampires and chosen family. (Paranormal. 13-18)Pub Date: May 23, 2023
ISBN: 9781643973401
Page Count: 206
Publisher: BHC Press
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
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
A nail-biting tale set in a beautifully rendered world of darkness and danger.
Best friends Petra and Jade live in an orphanage on the outskirts of a rundown city that’s grown up around the Void, a mysterious chasm that’s miles deep and wide.
Desperate to escape their grinding poverty, the 17-year-old girls work together as divers, guiding wealthy, thrill-seeking tourists on excursions into the complete darkness of the Void, with its carnivorous plants and vicious, cunning predators. The divers risk losing limbs—and their lives—and few ever reach the Void’s Sixth Layer, where lies the ancient city of Obscuris, which sank into the earth long ago, taking a mysterious power source and advanced technologies with it. A successful dive to Obscuris would secure the girls’ financial futures, but dark-haired, timid Petra is too afraid to try, despite Jade’s pushing. Only when green-eyed Jade, who’s pale-skinned with auburn hair, goes missing during a botched dive does Petra screw up her courage. Together with fellow diver Flint, who has dark-brown skin and a prosthetic leg and to whom she was once close, Petra heads back into the Void for what she promises herself will be her very last dive—all the way to the Sixth Layer. But what she finds in the deep is peril, pain, and something genuinely shocking. This gory novel moves at a fast pace, and its strengths include its lush and innovative worldbuilding, gruesome body horror, and unflinching commitment to the bleakness of its narrative.
A nail-biting tale set in a beautifully rendered world of darkness and danger. (Horror. 14-18)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781967967247
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Bindery Books
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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