Books Read in 2023: Four-Star Fantasy and Sci-Fi

I am not feeling on top of the world physically. Still hacking until I throw up a little at least once or twice a day. Made a doctor's appointment for Thursday morning (I would have tried to go Saturday morning but the plow hadn't come by yet and our street was impassable). I also have my January headache and I'm out of migraine meds. This is actually not a complaint, because I still made it to work every day last week and got my dad to his hand surgeon appointment and made dinner, um, a couple times at least, I actually can't remember but I'm pretty sure we ate stuff, so... my point is, it's January and I'm sick and I'm still not in the depths of despair. Yesterday (I mean Saturday) I mostly read in my reading chair, because if I don't move I cough less and I've been longing for a reading day for weeks, and it was perfect and I did not feel restless or guilty by the end of the day. So for now, the dosage increase on my antidepressant is doing its job, which is really freaking cool. 

You know that feeling when you think you're out of something and then you find a brand new of that something? This has happened to me three times in recent memory. The first was a bottle of dry shampoo from Lush, right after I had ordered some Lush stuff for Eve for Christmas and not re-ordered my dry shampoo because we had spent so much in December already. Then a can of my hairspray which is not as easy to find as it used to be, and, just to break the hair theme, a refill container of foaming liquid soap. This is one of the best feelings in the world (if you are a white-ass, middle-class, basic bitch with not a lot of real problems, I guess). 

I did have to buy a new bottle of moisturizer. How do you deal with pump bottles of body lotion when the lotion gets too low for the pump to work anymore? I shake the bottle around until I get a couple more pumps, then take the pump out and try to shake out the lotion, end up with a giant glob that over-moisturizes whatever I start with and under-moisturizes whatever I finish with, and then the top of the bottle gets crusty and gross, I buy a new bottle but still leave the old one sitting there for a couple days, and then throw out the old one while feeling guilty and wasteful. Anyone have a better system?

Four-Star Fantasy and Sci-Fi

Into the Light by Mark Oshiro. Synopsis from Goodreads: When you're like me, you have to lie. It’s been one year since Manny was cast out of his family and driven into the wilderness of the American Southwest. Since then, Manny lives by self-taught rules that keep him moving―and keep him alive. Now, he’s taking a chance on a traveling situation with the Varela family, whose attractive but surly son, Carlos, seems to promise a new future. I can't let anyone down. Eli abides by the rules of his family, living in a secluded community that raised him to believe his obedience will be rewarded. But an unsettling question slowly eats away at Eli’s once unwavering faith in Why can’t he remember his past? What am I supposed to do? But the reported discovery of an unidentified body found in the hills of Idyllwild, California, will draw both of these young men into facing their biggest fears and confronting their own identity―and who they are allowed to be.

-"I know I can't be too picky when I have almost nothing to my name. So I take the bill, and guilt rages as I stuff it next to the twenties I lifted from the Varelas. Turns out I would have been fine without stealing from them. I'm not a good person. But I can't really afford to be."

-"'Why would he listen to you about my life but not me?' "The Lord works in mysterious ways,' she says, nodding. 'Well, could he stop being such a fucking mystery to me?'

Oops, I believe this is probably also YA, but I don't feel like screwing with the finished posts, so here it shall stay. There is a lot going on in this book, and for the most part Oshiro keeps it together, although the pacing goes a tiny bit wonky in the middle. At times it it almost too earnest, but for the most part it's uncomfortably, viscerally vivid about how it must feel to be ostracized by your family and community and have no one to rely on - until you do, and then you're afraid to trust it. Even without the mystical dimension it would have worked as a novel. Gay Latinx unhoused youth representation.

VenCo by Cherie Dimaline. Synopsis from Goodreads: Lucky St. James, a Métis millennial living with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella, is barely hanging on when she discovers she will be evicted from their tiny Toronto apartment. Then, one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. Burrowing through a wall, she finds a silver spoon etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM, humming with otherworldly energy. Hundreds of miles away in Salem, Myrna Good has been looking for Lucky. Myrna works for VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money. Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon links her to VenCo’s network of witches throughout North America. Generations of witches have been waiting for centuries for the seven spoons to come together, igniting a new era, and restoring women to their rightful power. But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. He’s Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself. To find the last spoon, Lucky and Stella embark on a rollicking and dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning…or remain underground forever.

I didn't love The Marrow Thieves as much as I felt like I should (from what friends with similar reading tastes had said), so I was a bit hesitant. Then my friend Nat (HI NAT) was reading and loving it, so I took a crack at it (we were Facebook messaging about it, and I tried to type "VenCo" into Google to see what it was about, and instead typed "BenCo" into the message box and Nat was like WTF and I laughed so hard I almost peed). 

I liked it very much. Lucky and Stella are an appealing motley crew of two, I love a quest (I used to collect spoons too, from different places, and there were dedicated spoon racks for them, that is so weird, now that I think of it), and the gathering of female power is shivery good. The building of intensity towards the final confrontation is measured and effective, and the payoff is satisfying. Stella is also a great character, although like all characters of this ilk, she annoyed me at first. 

No Gods, No Monsters (Convergence Saga #2) by Cadwell Turnbull. Synopsis from Goodreads: One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother has been shot and killed by Boston cops. But what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger. Monsters are real. And they want everyone to know it. As creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, seeking safety through visibility, their emergence sets off a chain of seemingly unrelated events. Members of a local werewolf pack are threatened into silence. A professor follows a missing friend’s trail of bread crumbs to a mysterious secret society. And a young boy with unique abilities seeks refuge in a pro-monster organization with secrets of its own. Meanwhile, more people start disappearing, suicides and hate crimes increase, and protests erupt globally, both for and against the monsters. At the center is a mystery no one thinks to ask: Why now? What has frightened the monsters out of the dark? The world will soon find out.

-"Something is not right at all. Her mother smells dirty, as if she hasn't showered in some time. But something else too. A sharp note of something at the heart of her mother. Muddy and sweet. Devotion, heart-deep and rich. Pungent and insane. A dark staircase reaching down forever."

-"He could have said, 'No one is safe, not really.' He could have said there are things in this world that can pull you apart and turn your body to smoke. That the universe sometimes walks on two legs and peers at you through distant clouds of stardust. But that won't do either of them any good."

I got the author's previous novel (his debut) from NetGalley and loved it, so immediately requested this when it came out. I struggled with it quite a bit, and only picked it up again in December because I wanted to get it finished before the end of the year. I skimmed through it again last night, which pretty much cemented what I felt the first time around - there were several different storylines, and each one was impactful in its own way, but I had trouble figuring out how it all fit together and would lose the thread at times. In Turnbull's afterword, he straight-out apologizes for having too many characters, which made me forgive everything. The Lesson takes place in The Virgin Islands, while this one takes place there and in the U.S. This lent a different flavour to the themes of colonialism and racism. The "monsters", naturally, add another dimension to the subject of othering, causing division between friends and parents and children. 

There is representation for race, asexuality, transgenderism, and werewolfery etc. The secret society and parallel universe elements were rich and strange, and I hope the second book pulls everything together somewhat, or that my focus is better, because I really love what Turnbull is going for, enough to overlook a few bumps. 

The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart. Synopsis from Goodreads: An impossible crime. A detective on the edge of madness. The future of time travel at stake. January Cole’s job just got a whole lot harder. Not that running security at the Paradox was ever really easy. Nothing’s simple at a hotel where the ultra-wealthy tourists arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting to catch their “flights” to the past. Or where proximity to the timeport makes the clocks run backward on occasion—and, rumor has it, allows ghosts to stroll the halls. None of that compares to the corpse in room 526. The one that seems to be both there and not there. The one that somehow only January can see. On top of that, some very important new guests have just checked in. Because the U.S. government is about to privatize time-travel technology—and the world’s most powerful people are on hand to stake their claims. January is sure the timing isn’t a coincidence. Neither are those “accidents” that start stalking their bidders. There’s a reason January can glimpse what others can’t. A reason why she’s the only one who can catch a killer who’s operating invisibly and in plain sight, all at once. But her ability is also destroying her grip on reality—and as her past, present, and future collide, she finds herself confronting not just the hotel’s dark secrets but her own.

-”And for the briefest moment, I think the same thing I think every time I see her: a five-minute tram ride. That’s all it would take. I just have to be willing to break the rules I’ve sworn to uphold and maybe destroy reality in the process.

Some days, it seems worth it.”

-”’It’s my responsibility to say that your behavior is making it very clear you’re hiding something from me, and…’

‘You are a flying toaster. Save the commentary.’

It doesn’t respond. I hope I hurt its feelings. Does it have feelings? Should I program in some feelings so I can hurt them?”

It's a hotel where people come to set off on a cruise to a different time, and yet all the action takes place in the hotel. You might have thought I would find this excruciating, but I did not. Much. Kidding. This is a beautiful story about guilt and remorse, and the hope for redemption. January Cole is the kind of irascible heroine whose drunken, verbally abusive veneer clearly covers a deep well of pain. The host of wonky events showing that time is out of joint are entertaining except for the fact that you know the big reveal about why January is so angry and tormented is going to be searing.

 Anomaly by Hervé le Tellier, Adriana Hunter (translator). Synopsis from Goodreads: A virtuoso novel where logic confronts magic and that explores the part of ourselves that  us. In June 2021, a senseless event upends the lives of hundreds of men and women, all passengers on a flight from Paris to New York. Among them: Blake, a respectable family man, though  works as a contract killer; Slimboy, a Nigerian pop star tired of living a lie; Joanna, a formidable lawyer whose flaws have caught up with her; and Victor Miesel, a critically acclaimed yet commercially unsuccessful writer who suddenly becomes a cult hit. All of them believed they had double lives. None imagined just how true that was. This witty variation on the doppelgänger theme, which takes us on a journey from Lagos and Mumbai to the White House, is Hervé Le Tellier's most ambitious work yet.

-”They left nothing out; if the pentagon had asked them to present all the possible outcomes of heads or tails, they would have come up with three: heads, tails and the rare incidence of the coin deciding to balance vertically on its edge. But in April 2002, ten days after the report was submitted, the DoD sent it back with a question written in red felt pen: ‘What if we’re confronted with a case that fits none of the situations covered?’

Tina rolled her eyes: How about the hypothesis where the flipped coin stays suspended in the air?”

Any book that deals with time travel or parallel realities, I will snap up first and ask questions later. Some of them are more plot based, trying to describe how the actual science might work and going from there. Some are much more philosophical and literary, investigating the existential implications, (as Cadwell Turnbull writes in No Gods, No Monsters, "If any old universe can exist, then what is the value of this one?") This is the latter type, which sometimes I find tedious, but here it really works. There is a conversation about what makes a person - the qualities they are born with, or the way they are shaped by the events in their life? And then the bureaucracy of a place - how does it deal with something completely inexplicable by logic or science? This plays out through the eyes of several very different characters, and it was fascinating and melancholy and lovely.

A House Between Earth and the Moon by Rebecca Scherm. Synopsis from Goodreads: Scientist Alex Welch-Peters has believed for twenty years that his super-algae can reverse the effects of climate change. His obsession with his research has jeopardized his marriage, his relationships with his kids, and his own professional future. When Sensus, the colossal tech company, offers him a chance to complete his research, he seizes the opportunity. The catch? His lab will be in outer space on Parallaxis, the first-ever luxury residential space station built for billionaires. Alex and six other scientists leave their loved ones to become Pioneers, the beta tenants of Parallaxis. But Parallaxis is not the space palace they were sold. Day and night, the embittered crew builds the facility under pressure from Sensus, motivated by the promise that their families will join them. Meanwhile, back on Earth, with much of the country ablaze in wildfires, Alex’s family tries to remain safe in Michigan. His teenage daughter, Mary Agnes, struggles through high school with the help of the ubiquitous Sensus phones implanted in everyone’s ears, archiving each humiliation, and wishing she could go to Parallaxis with her father—but her mother will never allow it. The Pioneers are the beta testers of another program, too. As they toil away two hundred miles in the sky, Sensus is designing an algorithm that will predict human behavior. Tess, a young social psychologist Sensus has hired to watch the Pioneers through their phones, begins to develop an intimate, obsessive relationship with her subjects. When she takes it a step further—traveling to Parallaxis to observe them up close—the controlled experiment begins to unravel.

-”Why had she let herself care about them so much, so completely? She was drilling down into the human experience in a way no one had before, ever, and she’d expected to be full, overflowing with it. Instead she felt hollow, like something rotting from the inside. Getting to be so many people at one time had made her into less than one.”

-”It took them nearly twenty minutes to get to the ladder. They took turns dragging Mozgov by his feet, very slowly, so that he could stay on his stomach.

‘I can get him up,’ Carl said, leaning on the wall and panting. ‘The bottom is the hardest part.’

They strapped Mozgov’s wrists together around Carl’s neck, and Carl hauled him up the ladder on his back. For the first two rungs, Alex watched in silent terror of the two men falling, Mozgov landing on his back. 

‘Every rung, they get lighter,’ Macy said quietly.”

So four stars definitely don't translate to "I really liked it" because Jesus, even if it's not an accurate snapshot of our future, it's probably not too far off, and it is terrifying. The human faces rang really true here - there was corruption and self-interest, but also courage and longing, and heroic efforts to make "meager, human-scale abilities" count, even in the face of "screaming catastrophe". If nothing else, it makes it really clear that even if the billionaires are able to escape to space, it's probably not going to be the luxurious dream they're anticipating.

Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk. Synopsis from Goodreads: A magical detective dives into the affairs of Chicago's divine monsters to secure a future with the love of her life. This sapphic period piece will dazzle anyone looking for mystery, intrigue, romance, magic, or all of the above. An exiled auspex who sold her soul to save her brother's life is offered one last job before serving an eternity in hell. When she turns it down, her client sweetens the pot by offering up the one payment she can't resist―the chance to have a future where she grows old with the woman she loves. To succeed, she is given three days to track down the White City Vampire, Chicago's most notorious serial killer. If she fails, only hell and heartbreak await.

A poignant and touching novella. Did you watch Supernatural? If you did, you know how Sam or Dean were forever stupidly sacrificing themselves to save each other, and then one of them would die but it never took, and then they'd fix that brother and then the other brother would do the same thing? Well, this is like that but gay and less sibling-ish. I love the title particularly because I am often very bad at reading or watching things where I know the end. Even though I love beautiful writing and I do believe the journey is at least as important as the destination, and how things happen is just as important as what happens, I have to push myself. Of course the meaning is slightly different here - do you throw your whole self into loving someone even if you know the relationship is ultimately doomed? Do you find joy in the present even when the future is certain pain and torment? 

Am I selling it?

Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey. Synopsis from Goodreads: “Come home.” Vera’s mother called and Vera obeyed. In spite of their long estrangement, in spite of the memories -- she's come back to the home of a serial killer. Back to face the love she had for her father and the bodies he buried there. Coming home is hard enough for Vera, and to make things worse, she and her mother aren’t alone. A parasitic artist has moved into the guest house out back, and is slowly stripping Vera’s childhood for spare parts. He insists that he isn’t the one leaving notes around the house in her father’s handwriting… but who else could it possibly be? There are secrets yet undiscovered in the foundations of the notorious Crowder House. Vera must face them, and find out for herself just how deep the rot goes.

-”Each time she presses her hook down into tender flesh – each time a worm turns into a tense thrumming fighting thing in her hand – she feels that same lush thrill. Here is something that she controls. Here is something that responds to her with the kind of frantic immediacy she’s always wanted from the world.”

Once again I confused one author for another, so I had in my head that I had read and liked one Sarah Gailey book and then struggled to find another, when in fact I don't tend to mesh with this author. This was very, very slow to pick up, and I came close to DNF-ing multiple times. The big secret about Vera's father is given away from the outset, but then it wasn't quite what I was expecting after all. I read at least one reviewer who said the last third of the book was worth getting through the first two-thirds, and by and large I agree - the payoff feels vital and strange and effective in a way I wasn't expecting. There is atmosphere to burn here, and the characters are memorable and compelling. It was probably not the best choice to read it in January.

The Mimicking of Known Successess (Mossa and Pleiti #1) by Malka Ann Older. Synopsis from Goodreads: The Mimicking of Known Successes presents a cozy Holmesian murder mystery and sapphic romance, set on Jupiter, by Malka Older, author of the critically-acclaimed Centenal Cycle. On a remote, gas-wreathed outpost of a human colony on Jupiter, a man goes missing. The enigmatic Investigator Mossa follows his trail to Valdegeld, home to the colony’s erudite university—and Mossa’s former girlfriend, a scholar of Earth’s pre-collapse ecosystems. Pleiti has dedicated her research and her career to aiding the larger effort towards a possible return to Earth. When Mossa unexpectedly arrives and requests Pleiti’s assistance in her latest investigation, the two of them embark on a twisting path in which the future of life on Earth is at stake—and, perhaps, their futures, together.

Something about the world-building here - the cozy, academic, sheltered indoor spaces with the harsh, unforgiving alien weather outside - was really enchanting to me. I immediately wanted to enroll in a college or become a professor on a planet with an inhospitable atmosphere (Nicole - hygge life on Mars, you and me babe, how about it?) I'm not sure if I'm just dense, but I had to go back and read the description of the story as a "Sapphic romance" to be sure that Pleiti was also a woman - the perils of unusual sci-fi character names?

Truthfully, as I'm sitting here a couple of weeks after finishing this short piece, I'm having trouble remembering exactly how the mystery was resolved, but it doesn't really matter to me - the beautifully complicated dynamic between the characters, along with the setting,  were enough for me to willingly follow this author wherever she goes next.

Books Read in 2023: Four-Star YA Fantasy and Horror

Thursday school today (yesterday - shit got late, sorry). The first class that came in was off-the-charts lovely. They all wished me happy new year, got their books and sat and read quietly, then said good-bye and thank-you when they were leaving. This gave me an abundant cushion of good will for later on when the challenging class came in. Or rather, when they lined up in the hall outside being very loud, whereupon I waited for them to quiet down. And waited. And waited. But that was okay, because today I just waited calmly until they were quiet. Partly because I don't like yelling and partly because I have very little voice due to persistent hacking cough. 

I went over the expectations for library behaviour and then waited again for them to be quiet enough to hear their names while I handed out their cards. In a beautiful turn of events, the quiet kids started getting mad at the kids who were still talking. The one super-twat kid was still super-twattish and kept making loud and un-funny cracks that he clearly thought were hilarious ("maybe he has a difficult home life" Eve said later, "Probably just a dick, though"). I just ignored him. Most of the class still ignored the teacher when she asked them to line up at the end, so I just walked around quietly rounding them up. Check me, being so proud about not getting into (and losing) power struggles with ten-year-olds. 

At the other end of the spectrum entirely, a little girl on Monday gave me this:

So it's going to take more than a grade-four douche-munchkin to harsh my vibe for a while. 

Four-Star YA Fantasy and Horror

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng. Synopsis from Goodreads: A novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear. Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture” in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old. Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.

-”His father loves myths and obscure Latin roots and words so long you had to practice before rattling them off like a rosary. He used to interrupt his own sentences to explain a complicated term, to wander off the path of his thought down a switchback trail, telling Bird the history of the word, where it came from, its whole life story and all its siblings and cousins. Scraping back the layers of its meaning. Once Bird had loved it, too, back when he was younger, back when his father was still a professor and his mother was still here and everything was different. When he’d still thought stories could explain anything.”

Three-and-a-half stars. Apparently this is YA. Is something YA if it has a main character who is not an adult? Sometimes I find it confusing. I did not think this was quite as good as Everything I Never Told You, although I liked a lot about it. The insidious slide from fear and suspicion regarding The Other to outright racist discrimination codified into law is frighteningly convincing. The way the relationship between Bird and his father breaks down under the absence of his mother is heartrending.

What Stalks Among Us by Sarah Hollowell. Synopsis from Goodreads: From Sarah Hollowell, author of A Dark and Starless Forest, comes a spine-tingling, deliriously creepy YA speculative thriller about two best friends trapped in a corn maze with corpses that look just like them. Best friends and high school seniors Sadie and Logan make their first mistake when they ditch their end-of-year field trip to the amusement park in favor of exploring some old, forgotten backroads. The last thing they expect to come across is a giant, abandoned corn maze. But with a whole day of playing hooking unspooling before them, they make their second mistake. Or perhaps their third? Maybe even their fourth. Because Sadie and Logan have definitely entered this maze before. And again before that. When they stumble on the corpses in the maze, identical to them in every way (if you can ignore the stab and gunshot wounds)--from their clothes to their hidden scars to their dyed hair, to that one missing tooth--they quickly realize they’ve not only entered this maze before, they’ve died in it too. A lot. And no matter what they try, they can’t figure out what—or who —is hunting them. Deeply unnerving, clever, and atmospheric, this time-bending, mind-bending speculative horror is a poignant meditation on the lasting effects of trauma and the healing powers of connection and forgiveness—all while delivering more surprise twists and turns than a haunted corn maze. 

-"I try to push myself up. My hands sink up to the wrists in mud. How freaking deep is this stuff? I sink farther. I immediately stop moving. Goddammit, I knew quicksand was going to be a problem at some point in my life. 'Uhm,' I said, high-pitched. 'Hey, guys?'"

I followed Sarah Hollowell when I was still on Twitter when Twitter was still Twitter (ten percent boost in mental health since I quit that shit), and had not gotten around to reading her first book yet but was interested to read her writing. The cool stuff here was very cool - haunted corn maze, time loops (sort of), corn-maze strangers who might be trustworthy OR alternatively might be about to stab you with a pitchfork. I also appreciate a boy-girl friendship that is allowed to just (not just, but just) be a friendship.

I feel like a bit of an asshole saying the other part, because it's a part that assholes frequently seize on, but although I love that this is a fat writer writing a fat female character, some of the writing around that, and around Sadie's mental health issues, verges on preachy and is heavy on jargon, and that made it hard not to be taken out of the story. Sadie also refers to herself as bisexual (once, I think), but it has no bearing on anything - I'm all for casual representation, but that's maybe a bit too casual? I absolutely appreciate that it is probably difficult to strike a balance with that kind of thing, it just feels dishonest not to mention it. 

The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould. Synopsis from Goodreads: The Dark has been waiting for far too long, and it won't stay hidden any longer. Something is wrong in Snakebite, Oregon. Teenagers are disappearing, some turning up dead, the weather isn’t normal, and all fingers seem to point to TV’s most popular ghost hunters who have just returned to town. Logan Ortiz-Woodley, daughter of TV's ParaSpectors, has never been to Snakebite before, but the moment she and her dads arrive, she starts to get the feeling that there's more secrets buried here than they originally let on. Ashley Barton’s boyfriend was the first teen to go missing, and she’s felt his presence ever since. But now that the Ortiz-Woodleys are in town, his ghost is following her and the only person Ashley can trust is the mysterious Logan. When Ashley and Logan team up to figure out who—or what—is haunting Snakebite, their investigation reveals truths about the town, their families, and themselves that neither of them are ready for. As the danger intensifies, they realize that their growing feelings for each other could be a light in the darkness.

-”Logan closed her eyes. There was a distinct smell coming from the cabin, like spiced cider and wood smoke. It was a smell she remembered, though she couldn’t place it. It conjured up memories of laughter she couldn't quite hear. She tasted blackberries on her tongue. The bones of a memory were scattered before her, but she couldn’t bring them to life. It was suffocating, this familiarity.”

Three and a half stars. Ambitious and dark for a debut. Gay dads, lesbian daughter, ghost-hunting tv show, real ghost (or something). Gets pretty intense for YA. Will be following this author with interest.

You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron. Synopsis from Goodreads: This heart-pounding slasher by New York Times bestselling author Kalynn Bayron is perfect for fans of Fear Street. Charity Curtis has the summer job of her dreams, playing the “final girl” at Camp Mirror Lake. Guests pay to be scared in this full-contact terror game, as Charity and her summer crew recreate scenes from a classic slasher film, Curse of Camp Mirror Lake. The more realistic the fear, the better for business. But the last weekend of the season, Charity's co-workers begin disappearing. And when one ends up dead, Charity's role as the final girl suddenly becomes all too real. If Charity and her girlfriend Bezi hope to survive the night, they'll need figure out what this killer is after. Is there is more to the story of Mirror Lake and its dangerous past than Charity ever suspected?

-”Now, in this situation, horror films tell us that the final girl might go ahead and enter the community showers, disrobe, and then barely escape a masked killer as she slips around butt naked in the bathroom. However, I only play a final girl at Camp Mirror Lake; I don’t actually want to be one. I turn my Black ass right around and book it back to my cabin, where I close and lock the door.”

-”I’ve been a fan of horror movies and scary stories my whole life. I’ve read every Tananarive Due novel, seen every Jordan Peele film. I love horror movies even when everybody else thinks they’re garbage. I will gladly debate anybody who got something to say about the masterpiece that is Crimson Peak.”

I really enjoyed this. When I'm looking for books by black women, and one is horror? Hell yes. Great casual representation for race and sexual orientation, a little bit of Scream-like sending up of horror movie tropes without being derivative, and spinning it for Black characters, who are so often ignored. Charity is a great character, determined not to behave like a regular horror movie character (this falters a tiny bit near the end), smart and courageous - also a horror lover, so a girl after my own heart. The story isn't too predictable, which is always a risk with this genre. I will never turn my nose up at a good summer camp horror, particularly one as well done as this.

The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson. Synopsis from Goodreads: * AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * INDIE BESTSELLER * JUNIOR LIBRARY GUILD SELECTION * KIDS' INDIE NEXT LIST PICK * NPR BEST PICK * KIRKUS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR * New York Times bestselling author Tiffany D. Jackson ramps up the horror and tackles America’s history and legacy of racism in this suspenseful YA novel following a biracial teenager as her Georgia high school hosts its first integrated prom. When Springville residents—at least the ones still alive—are questioned about what happened on prom night, they all have the same explanation . . . Maddy did it. An outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. And she's dealt with it because she has more pressing problems to manage. Until the morning a surprise rainstorm reveals her most closely kept secret: Maddy is biracial. She has been passing for white her entire life at the behest of her fanatical white father, Thomas Washington. After a viral bullying video pulls back the curtain on Springville High's racist roots, student leaders come up with a plan to change their host the school's first integrated prom as a show of unity. The popular white class president convinces her Black superstar quarterback boyfriend to ask Maddy to be his date, leaving Maddy wondering if it's possible to have a normal life. But some of her classmates aren't done with her just yet. And what they don't know is that Maddy still has another secret . . . one that will cost them all their lives.

-”’Well, clearly a Black one,’ Jason quipped. Gotta be from the East Side.’

‘Gross.’ Kayleigh blinked quick at Kenny. ‘Well, not her being Black, but anyone sleeping with that loon. He smells awful!’

Struggling to rein in his annoyance, Kenny took one last sip of air before pasting on the standard generic smile he would maintain for the rest of the day. Just about everyone would want to talk to him about Maddy, but he had to remain unfazed, the same composure he kept whenever anything happened to Black people and they wanted unsaid permission for him to speak about it freely. Because if Kenny was okay with it, then it must be okay.

He chuckled. ‘Yeah, he does.’”

-”’I don’t know how to answer that,’ he admitted. Not because he didn’t love Wendy, but football felt just as important, if not his whole world. If he was honest with himself, Kenny could also admit that deep below the surface, rotting beneath the floorboards, lay resentment over the responsibility of loving them both more than he loved himself.”

Carrie, but with racism. And the prom is the county's first integrated one. Need I say more? Okay, I'll say a little more. The wound-super-tight male protagonist - star football player whose father puts crazy pressure on him, and whose white friends just expect him to be cool with their casual racism - is the most sympathetic to me, probably because his situation is more realistic than Maddy's. Maddy's unhinged father is a worthy callback to Carrie's mother. It's not the Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Psycho version of Carrie, but it resonates with the original really well and is a really interesting exercise, as well as a good example of YA horror in its own right.

The Memory Eater by Rebecca Mahoney. Synopsis from Goodreads: A teenage girl must save her town from a memory-devouring monster in this piercing exploration of grief, trauma, and memory, from the author of The Valley and the Flood. For generations, a monster called the Memory Eater has lived in the caves of Whistler Beach, Maine, surviving off the unhappy memories of those who want to forget. And for generations, the Harlows have been in charge of keeping her locked up—and keeping her fed. After her grandmother dies, seventeen-year-old Alana Harlow inherits the family business. But there’s something Alana doesn’t know: the strange gaps in her memory aren’t from an accident. Her memories have been taken—eaten. And with them, she’s lost the knowledge of how to keep the monster contained. Now the Memory Eater is loose. Alana’s mistake could cost Whistler Beach everything—unless she can figure out how to retrieve her own memories and recapture the monster. But as Alana delves deeper into her family’s magic and the history of her town, she discovers a shocking secret at the center of the Harlow family business and learns that tampering with memories never comes without a price.

-”He flashes a warm, sympathetic smile as I pass. I’m of the firm opinion that no one is good enough for Rue, but if she and David ever break out of their Beautiful Shy Heterosexual holding pattern, I will grudgingly approve.”

-’’Oh, my little love. I think you’ve helped enough,’ she says. ‘Do you think this is what I wanted? Can you imagine eating the same terrible thing for decades upon decades, and when you finally walk free, you find you can’t eat anything else? I hate the taste of pain, Alana. It tastes like needles and ash.’”

This was quite stunningly beautiful and original. A classic, beautiful-coastal-town setting? Check. A terrifying monster who threatens not your life, but the very essence of your being? Check. Gritty-but-vulnerable wise-cracking heroine pining after her ex-girlfriend? YEAH. Some really gorgeous writing about memory and family and generational trauma as well. Highly recommended.

These Fleeting Shadows by Kate Alice Marshall. Synopsis from Goodreads: Helen Vaughan doesn't know why she and her mother left their ancestral home at Harrowstone Hall, called Harrow, or why they haven't spoken to their extended family since. So when her grandfather dies, she's shocked to learn that he has left everything—the house, the grounds, and the money—to her. The inheritance comes with one condition: she must stay on the grounds of Harrow for one full year, or she'll be left with nothing. There is more at stake than money. For as long as she can remember, Harrow has haunted Helen's dreams—and now those dreams have become a waking nightmare. Helen knows that if she is going to survive the year, she needs to uncover the secrets of Harrow. Why is the house built like a labyrinth? What is digging the holes that appear in the woods each night? And why does the house itself seem to be making her sick? With each twisted revelation, Helen questions what she knows about Harrow, her family, and even herself. She no longer wonders if she wants to leave…but if she can.

Has what Marshall does well - complicated family dynamics, murky folklore connected to a mysterious house, an inheritance that turns out to be much more complicated than initially suspected. And gayness! I still read more YA than is probably healthy, but only if it's gay!

Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson. Synopsis from Goodreads: Mila Flores and her best friend Riley have always been inseparable. There's not much excitement in their small town of Cross Creek, so Mila and Riley make their own fun, devoting most of their time to Riley's favorite activity: amateur witchcraft. So when Riley and two Fairmont Academy mean girls die under suspicious circumstances, Mila refuses to believe everyone's explanation that her BFF was involved in a suicide pact. Instead, armed with a tube of lip gloss and an ancient grimoire, Mila does the unthinkable to uncover the truth: she brings the girls back to life. Unfortunately, Riley, June, and Dayton have no recollection of their murders, but they do have unfinished business to attend to. Now, with only seven days until the spell wears off and the girls return to their graves, Mila must wrangle the distracted group of undead teens and work fast to discover their murderer...before the killer strikes again.

-"I know he's mostly talking about June and Dayton. They weren't nice when they were alive. They used to make fun of Riley for living above a funeral home. And they made fun of me for being fat and Mexican. They found the things about other people that made them different and highlighted how that made them shitty. It was like they learned how to be popular from TV and didn't understand that being known didn't have to be synonymous with being a dick."

-"'How could you say something like that?' June gasps, taking an affronted step back. 'We just found out were were murdered, Riley Greenway. Have some respect.' 'We were all murdered, June. Your death is not that special,' Riley says."

Now this is a fat Mexican character whose fat Mexicanness IS integral to the plot. And there is magic, and there are zombies - in fact, magic that leads to zombies. And there is snark and humour - much of it related to the logistics of harbouring dead mean girls who are learning to be less mean - but also genuine processing of emotion, loss, and grief. And learning that, even with magic, some things should not be possible. 

Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah. Synopsis from Goodreads: Andrea Hannah's Where Darkness Blooms is a supernatural thriller about an eerie town where the sunflowers whisper secrets and the land hungers for blood. The town of Bishop is known for exactly two recurring windstorms and an endless field of sunflowers that stretches farther than the eye can see. And women―missing women. So when three more women disappear one stormy night, no one in Bishop is surprised. The case is closed and their daughters are left in their dusty shared house with the shattered pieces of their lives. Until the wind kicks up a terrible secret at their mothers’ much-delayed memorial. With secrets come the lies each of the girls is forced to confront. After caring for the other girls, Delilah would like to move on with her boyfriend, Bennett, but she can’t bear his touch. Whitney has already lost both her mother and her girlfriend, Eleanor, and now her only solace is an old weathervane that seems to whisper to her. Jude, Whitney's twin sister, would rather ignore it all, but the wind kicks up her secret: the summer fling she had with Delilah's boyfriend. And more than anything, Bo wants answers and she wants them now. Something happened to their mothers and the townsfolk know what it was. She’s sure of it.

-"'Miss Thompson, are you defying an officer of the law right now?' Indignant rage flared in Jeff Ableman's eyes like liquid smoke. It was the kind of rage that men kept nestled deep beneath their ribs, the kind that rose between the bones whenever someone didn't automatically hang on their words like laundry drying on the line. It was the kind of rage that killed for disobedience, even when you never belonged to that man in the first place."

This is a big one for "I really enjoyed it when I was reading it, but afterwards all of the points other people brought up about why it largely made very little sense made...a lot of sense". But whatever, the imagery is effective and as a metaphor for patriarchy (which also frequently makes very little sense) I feel like it works. And of all the YA novels with girls faces surrounded by creepy flowers on the cover, it's one of my favourites. 

Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters. Synopsis from Goodreads: Sawkill Girls meets Beautiful Creatures in this lush and eerie debut, where the boundary between reality and nightmares is as thin as the veil between the living and the dead.  If I could have a fiddle made of Daddy’s bones, I’d play it. I’d learn all the secrets he kept. Shady Grove inherited her father’s ability to call ghosts from the grave with his fiddle, but she also knows the fiddle’s tunes bring nothing but trouble and darkness. But when her brother is accused of murder, she can’t let the dead keep their secrets. In order to clear his name, she’s going to have to make those ghosts sing. Family secrets, a gorgeously resonant LGBTQ love triangle, and just the right amount of creepiness make this young adult debut a haunting and hopeful story about facing everything that haunts us in the dark.

-"This instrument runs on grief and regret and rage; it only works if its player gives herself over to grief, lets it fill her like the music, every nook, every cranny of her soul. The same reason the ghosts are chained to this world, unable to pass on, is why Daddy's fiddle can raise them. Grief is what binds the living and the dead. He couldn't have taught me to play this fiddle even if he'd wanted to. Only his death could teach me."

At some point I noticed that the ebooks from my library often have Publishers Weekly reviews attached to the synopsis. At some further point I realized I was subtly veering away from reading anything that didn't have a starred review. Then I realized this is a little silly - I am interested in reviews, but I don't automatically agree with all of them. I'm glad I realized this in time to read this book, because it would have been unfortunate to pass it up.
It is really difficult to write about music convincingly ("like dancing about architecture", as they say), and this book manages it strikingly well. The family dynamic was really well done - everyone wasn't perfect, but no one was entirely evil, and everyone was very three-dimensional. Generally I loathe and despise love triangles, but, ladies and gentleman, the pinnacle of my super-gay YA reading is *trumpet sounds* a bisexual girl in a love triangle with a girl AND a guy. That's got to have a couple of years before it gets completely stale, right? (Seriously, it works really well, all love triangles should henceforth be bi-sosceles).

Books Read in 2023: Four-Star YA Fantasy and Horror, and Some Regards

 Regarding An Elderly Woman is Up to No Good, recommended by Engie: it is presently on hold at the library.

Regarding Nicole's unstamped letter: ha ha omg yes. The first thing this makes me think of is when Angus was about four and my parents had recently moved from five hours away to five minutes away, I helped him write a little letter to them and he was so proud to address it and put it in the mailbox. But I forgot to put a stamp on. We had a really lovely mailman back then who hand-delivered it to my mom instead. The last thing it makes me think of is early December when I wrote my first Christmas card and carefully addressed and stamped it. And then looked at it for a few minutes, and then carefully peeled off the stamp from the upper left corner and put it in the upper right corner instead. Sigh.

Regarding Marilyn's comment about not liking Mexican Gothic but liking being able to exchange knowing glances with other people who've read it - yes, definitely. This is why I read...not many books, but some for sure - to be up on their place in the cultural vernacular.

Regarding Common Household Mom's story about the ad that went through half a dozen proofreaders and still got printed with the wrong date - what the heck can you do, sometimes your brain just sees what it expects and that's all it can do. The story of my friend Collette (HI COLLETTE) getting a birthday cake for her oldest son's first birthday and nearly the whole party being over before anyone noticed that the cake said HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACBO lives in infamy. 

Regarding Steph's comment about The Strain - ha ha, yes, I have watched it, and read it. I only watched it a couple of years ago, even though it came out in 2014. I quite liked it - I loved Fet and Dutch, hated the second actor who played Eph's kid, and thought the ending was pretty good. 

Regarding Regarding Henry - this is a 1991 movie starring Harrison Ford about a lawyer who's kind of a dick until he gets shot in the head and wakes up with amnesia and then turns nice. This is a frequent trope in writing and tv, but it doesn't really happen, does it? Why wouldn't someone nice get amnesia and turn into a dick just as often? Movie and book amnesia is fun, but dumb. 

Four-Star Children's

The Goldfish Boy by Lisa Thompson. Synopsis from Goodreads: Matthew Corbin suffers from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. He hasn't been to school in weeks. His hands are cracked and bleeding from cleaning. He refuses to leave his bedroom. To pass the time, he observes his neighbors from his bedroom window, making mundane notes about their habits as they bustle about the cul-de-sac. When a toddler staying next door goes missing, it becomes apparent that Matthew was the last person to see him alive. Suddenly, Matthew finds himself at the center of a high-stakes mystery, and every one of his neighbors is a suspect. Matthew is the key to figuring out what happened and potentially saving a child's life... but is he able to do so if it means exposing his own secrets, and stepping out from the safety of his home?

Lunchtime read. Great story - a boy suffering from obsessive-compulsive tendencies from a traumatic happening, his struggle to connect with his peers and his parents' efforts to help him (with a few failures that are sad and enraging to read about). And a neighbourhood mystery. 

Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea. Synopsis from Goodreads: It’s the start of fifth grade for seven kids at Snow Hill School. There’s . . . Jessica, the new girl, smart and perceptive, who’s having a hard time fitting in; Alexia, a bully, your friend one second, your enemy the next; Peter, class prankster and troublemaker; Luke, the brain; Danielle, who never stands up for herself; shy Anna, whose home situation makes her an outcast; and Jeffrey, who hates school. Only Mr. Terupt, their new and energetic teacher, seems to know how to deal with them all. He makes the classroom a fun place, even if he doesn’t let them get away with much . . . until the snowy winter day when an accident changes everything—and everyone.

Lunchtime read. I picked it up because it is quite popular among sixth-graders. A solid entry in the remarkable-teacher-makes-a-difference canon.

Thirteens (Thirteens #1) by Kate Alice Marshall. Synopsis from Goodreads: A sleepy town with a dark secret--and the three kids brave enough to uncover it. Twelve-year-old Eleanor has just moved to Eden Eld to live with her aunt and uncle after her mother was killed in a fire. Her birthday, which falls on Halloween, is just around the corner, and she hopes that this year will be a fresh start at a new life. But then one morning, an ancient grandfather clock counting down thirteen hours appears outside of her bedroom. And then she spots a large black dog with glowing red eyes prowling the grounds of her school. A book of fairytales she's never heard of almost willingly drops in front of her, as if asking to be read. Something is wrong in the town of Eden Eld. Eleanor and her new classmates, Pip and Otto, are the only ones who see these "wrong things," and they also all happen to share a Halloween birthday. Bonded by these odd similarities, the trio uncovers a centuries-old pact the town has with a mysterious figure known as Mr. January: every thirteen years, three thirteen-year-olds disappear, sacrificed in exchange for the town's unending good fortune. This Halloween, Mr. January is back to collect his payment and Eleanor, Pip, and Otto are to be his next offering...unless they can break the curse before the clock strikes thirteen.

This is one of my favourite YA authors. This year she published her first adult novel, which I read, and I read these middle-grade novels also. I probably liked her YA stuff slightly more than the adult work, but this series was freaking fantastic. Three thirteen-year-olds, all with palindromic names, meet in an odd little town (Eden Eld - I ask you, is that not an exemplary Odd Little Town Name?) where two of them grew up and the third has come to live with relatives after her mother's death. They begin a beautifully-described friendship, and then, naturally, there are eldritch happenings, and uncanny clues, and a talking animal or two, and a clock whose hands run backwards. It's a delectable set-up, with a satisfying conclusion to round one of the mystery.

Brackenbeast (Thirteens #2) by Kate Alice Marshall. Synopsis from Goodreads: Last Halloween, Eleanor, Pip, and Otto narrowly escaped the clutches of the evil January Society and their leader. But life in the too-quiet Eden Eld isn't safe just yet: according to the bargain they made with Mr. January, it's now his sister's turn to hunt the three of them. And her methods are a bit more...treacherous. When their friends and neighbors begin disappearing, abducted by strange, mud-drenched monsters, Eleanor and her two best friends must race to uncover their enemy's secrets. If they fail, their families will be next. Stalked by the relentless mud beasts, they have to find a way to escape using their trusty book of twisted fairytales, their wits, and their friendship. But they quickly learn that the power of the stories they've turned to for help has a stronger hold on them--and their futures--than they realized. Even if Eleanor and her friends survive, they won't end this journey the same people.

Even more emotional intelligence exhibited in the friendship between the three protagonists. Attention paid to the trauma of having to be heroic. It's a little bit like Stranger Things, but not in a derivative way, just in the way that the kids are smart and funny and fun, and the events are magnificently strange. 

Glassheart (Thirteens #3) by Kate Alice Marshall. Synopsis from Goodreads:

Adds a couple of characters that ratchet up the tension and the melancholy. There's a really cool library. There's a really cool giant talking cat, and also a smaller one. It's all just really cool. I gave these to my daughter (my favourite palindrome), and she read two in the summer and took the third to read in October for Halloween. I read it just before New Year's so they would all be in the year-end review, because I would sure it would be a brilliant conclusion, and it was. This trilogy is up there with The Colours of Madeleine for books I'm a little surprised are not more popular. Clearly not everyone shares my exquisite taste. 

The Last Halloween Book 1: Children by Abby Howard. Synopsis from Goodreads: The Last Halloween, Book 1 is the story of Mona and her unusual friends, who must work together to defend humanity from countless horrific monstrosities! Perhaps they will succeed, and humanity will prevail as it always has. Or perhaps this will be... The Last Halloween.

Borrowed this from my Thursday school, and hoo boy, it was a trip. I am not one to shield children from reading material, but it's probably a good thing this was on the teen shelf (not that grade sevens and eights are teenagers, properly speaking). It is quite graphic as well as being, you know, graphic. There are demons and monstrosities and many deaths and dismemberments. One of the principal parents is nonbinary and their child simply calls them Parent. Some of the monsters are friendly and are helping in the battle against the monsters who are less so. The words "ragtag band" have perhaps never been quite so appropriate. Even though this was published in 2016 it seems a sequel is still promised, and sign me the fuck up -- the mind from whence this sprung is twisted in a really beautiful and entertaining manner.

Four-Star YA Mystery

Nothing More to Tell by Karen M. McManus. Synopsis from Goodreads: Four years ago, Brynn left Saint Ambrose School following the shocking murder of her favorite teacher—a story that made headlines after the teacher’s body was found by three Saint Ambrose students in the woods behind their school. The case was never solved. Now that Brynn is moving home and starting her dream internship at a true-crime show, she’s determined to find out what really happened. The kids who found Mr. Larkin are her way in, and her ex–best friend, Tripp Talbot, was one of them. Without his account of events, the other two kids might have gone down for Mr. Larkin’s murder—but instead, thanks to Tripp, they're now at the top of the Saint Ambrose social pyramid. Tripp’s friends have never forgotten what Tripp did for them that day, and neither has he. Just like he hasn’t forgotten that everything he told the police was a lie.

-”I check my phone and see a text from Mason that reads GORFF IS HERE I LURV HEM, so I can only assume that (1) Mason, a notorious lightweight, has been hitting the punch hard, and (2) he’s found his crush, Geoff. I catch sight of Nadia’s pink sweater in a knot of girls and decide that my friends are doing fine on their own for now.”

Not my favourite Karen McManus, but still enjoyable. One early thing I thought was screamingly obvious was not quite what I thought it was (so shows what I know). For a bit it felt like there wasn't enough going on, then for a bit there was almost too much going on. One key character I felt sort of acted OUT of character, and it wasn't adequately explained why. But I still like how she traces character's motivations, how she illuminates the sometimes-ridiculous yet deadly-earnest lives of teenagers, and makes me willing to believe for a few pages that a seventeen-year-old girl can solve a murder and still pass English.

A Long Stretch of Bad Days by Mindy McGinnis. Synopsis from Goodreads: Lydia Chass doesn’t mind living in a small town; she just doesn’t want to die in one. A lifetime of hard work has put her on track to attend a prestigious journalism program and leave Henley behind—until a school error leaves her a credit short of graduating. Undeterred, Lydia has a plan to earn that credit: transform her listener-friendly local history podcast into a truth-telling exposé. She’ll investigate the Long Stretch of Bad Days: a week when Henley was hit by a tornado and a flash flood as well as its first—and only—murder, which remains unsolved. But Lydia needs help to bring grit to the show. Bristal Jamison has a bad reputation and a foul mouth, but she also needs a credit to graduate. The unexpected partnership brings together the Chass family—a pillar of the community—and the rough-and-tumble Jamisons, with Bristal hoping to be the first in her family to graduate. Together, they dig into the town’s worst week, determined to solve the murder.

-”’And nobody looked for her?’ I ask, pushing. ‘Nobody cared about this lost teenaged girl!’

‘She didn’t care to be cared about,’ David says, his voice taking on an edge. ‘Paul and Erin tried – they did. But everything was upside down for a while after the long stretch. I mean, you should’ve seen the telephone poles in town. They were covered with missing posters for dogs and cats, people looking for their wallets or the wedding ring they’d taken off to mow the yard before the storm rolled in. We didn’t have–’

‘The internet. Phones. Compassion,’ Bristal supplies, twirling her finger in the air.”

-”Women are easily lost in the record of time. Our names change, our faces aren’t captured. If you look at the old stones in Fairlawn, you’ll see that half our founding population are commemorated through initials: J.F., wife of John; or A.S., mother of Hiram. If I cannot hear the voices of our founding fathers in their pencil sketches, how much more has been lost that we don’t even know the names of the women?”

Let's just be very frank right off the bat, nothing is ever going to surpass The Female of the Species, but this is miles better, in my opinion, than the bloody (and barfy) mess that was The Last Laugh. Lydia and Bristal are two very entertaining personalities to put together, and you know me and books about podcasts (well no, you might not, the joke is that I constantly say I'm going to start listening to podcasts and then continue to only read books about podcasts - oh, I also watch the occasional tv show about a podcast). This was the first time I actually bothered to think about what's meant by 'flyover country', and the setting plays a big part in the story. 

Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall. Synopsis from Goodreads: In the faux-documentary style of The Blair Witch Project comes the campfire story of a missing girl, a vengeful ghost, and the girl who is determined to find her sister—at all costs. Once a year, the path appears in the forest and Lucy Gallows beckons. Who is brave enough to find her—and who won't make it out of the woods? It's been exactly one year since Sara's sister, Becca, disappeared, and high school life has far from settled back to normal. With her sister gone, Sara doesn't know whether her former friends no longer like her... or are scared of her, and the days of eating alone at lunch have started to blend together. When a mysterious text message invites Sara and her estranged friends to "play the game" and find local ghost legend Lucy Gallows, Sara is sure this is the only way to find Becca—before she's lost forever. And even though she's hardly spoken with them for a year, Sara finds herself deep in the darkness of the forest, her friends—and their cameras—following her down the path. Together, they will have to draw on all of their strengths to survive. The road is rarely forgiving, and no one will be the same on the other side.

-”The road is here, and Becca is waiting.

‘No way,’ Jeremy says, shifting his weight back from the road. ‘Have you guys ever watched, like, a single movie? We get on that road and about thirty seconds from now some hook-handed motherfucker is wearing our guts like a scarf.’”

-”GRACE: Two of us are leaving here. And it will be easier if we make the decision now.

ZACH: You think you should be one of them.

GRACE: An organism strives first for self-preservation. Understanding that is the key to understanding everything else, don’t you see? There isn’t room for morality in survival. The road wants to survive. That’s why it calls us here. And we want to survive."

A reread of my first KAM book, before I read her adult book. Probably my favourite of hers so far - a lost sister, a mysterious road that only appears once a year, a city out of folklore, strange and horrible wonders encountered on the road, great casual representation. Curiously, I totally misremembered the ending. The documentary style interleaved with Sara's perspective is effective in itself and for breaking up the long trip on the road. The setting is unsettlingly effective, as well as the group dynamic. She probably has just enough characters before edging over into where it would be too hard to keep them all straight. I really like her writing - rich worldbuilding and striking descriptions of characters and emotions, vivid and affecting without going over into melodrama.

Tell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sedoti. Synopsis from Goodreads: There are stories about the woods around Salvation Creek, about the people who have gone missing. Now their friend is one of them. A riveting, fast-paced YA mystery told entirely through first person police interviews of four teens over the course of a few hours. It was all her idea. They would get away from their parents and spend the weekend camping. Down by Salvation Creek, the five of them would make smores, steal kisses, share secrets. But sometime around midnight, she vanished. Now the four friends who came back are under suspicion―and they each have a very different story to tell about what happened in the woods.

-”Stop being coy and saying someone brought the gun. You know exactly who brought it. God. It’s like you’re trying to waste my time.”

-”My thinking is humans built civilization to escape the wilderness, right? So why would I want to go back into it?”

As usual, I got this months after requesting it, so I didn't remember anything about it, including that it was YA. I would have preferred something a little denser and darker, but not gonna lie - I took it out one day, read it the next and returned it on the third. For what it is - sort of a thriller/character study, told exclusively in first-person voice from the police interviews - it is excellent. The different voices come through very distinctly right from the start. The plot resolution is telegraphed fairly early on, but it's very readable and propulsive, and the journey was enjoyable.