KILL YOUR DARLINGS

In Harish’s debut, a Tamil girl, a dead author, and a hellhound cross paths on Halloween.

Sixteen-year-old Thulasi is the Srinivasan family’s dutiful eldest daughter. She lives in Applesweet, a close-knit New England town whose entire identity rests on the legacy of their most famous former resident, 19th-century horror author Addison Greer. On Halloween morning, Thulasi picks up her order of a signed first edition of Greer’s The Black Dog and Other Stories from the local bookstore. That evening, she’s at the home of her classmate Sam Safra, a cute Egyptian Jewish and white football player. Sam gets a paper cut from the book, and his blood stains the page, leading the ink to run off in sheets and sending the book’s monsters pouring out into streets. Trapped in the chaos with Sam, his little sister, and her young cousin, Thulasi must survive attacks from myriad creatures and the threat of Addison herself, newly released from the book’s pages—while uncovering Applesweet’s dark history. Atmospheric Victorian horror bleeds into a present-day mystery, but the novel shines most in its social texture: Thulasi’s anxious people-pleasing ways and her exhaustion over dealing with casual racism as a brown girl in a predominantly white town feel painfully real. Sam serves as a thoughtful foil, while Thulasi’s bond with her cousin is the story’s warmest thread. Though the middle sags with prolonged siege sequences and much interiority, the Addison subplot rewards patience.

A deliciously wicked love letter to obsessive readers.