A delicious tale filled with desire and bite.
Siblings sent to small-town Oregon for the summer learn there’s something sinister afoot.
Theodora and her brother, Marco, would have preferred to stay in Phoenix for summer vacation, but because they got busted throwing a destructive party for which they nearly got arrested, they are forced to go with their recently divorced dad to his hometown of Nightfall to visit the grandmother they’ve never met. Nonna is superstitious and a bit eccentric, insisting that Theo and Marco follow her rule of not staying out past dark. But what’s the point of being in a new place if not to hang out with the attractive and alluring locals who party on the beach at night? Theo also befriends Elijah and Felix, a tourist couple with a popular horror podcast. She doesn’t want to believe the tales they are spinning, but she soon realizes that something is indeed quite off about this place. Readers will catch on to what kind of monsters lurk in Nightfall long before Theo does in this compulsively readable story. The unsettling and eerie tone throughout makes for a captivating ride, while teenage angst and lust make the characters interesting and relatable. When Theo does finally learn the truth, the story shifts into gruesome, exciting, action-packed horror. Theo and Marco are Mexican American on their mom’s side and implied Italian American on their dad’s; there’s racial diversity among the local residents and tourists.
A delicious tale filled with desire and bite. (Horror. 13-18)Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-48758-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 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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