Katherine Harbour's Blog, page 4

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

My Heart Is a Chainsaw
Loved this book! Jade Daniels. half Indigenous, is one of my new favorite characters, with her obsessive and impressive knowledge of horror slasher films. They're her comfort, after a childhood of abuse and neglect. When she begins to suspect her sleepy town is about to be the scene of a real life slasher's reign of terror, she identifies the new girl, Letha Mondragon, as the Final Girl. The ingredients are: Camp Blood; the legend of a creepy and tragic lake witch; and wealthy founders gentrifying the area. The characters--who would be stock in a slasher--are vividly and poignantly portrayed. Unlike the cannon fodder in slasher movies, though, these are characters you'll genuinely care about. Jade is endearingly complicated, smart, and funny, and her hunch proves to be true during the gory horror of the reveal.

The Darkest Star by Jennifer L. Armentrout

The Darkest Star
A clever premise--the world is recovering from an alien attack. The aliens were defeated and some still live on the earth. They are called the Lux and can appear to be human. They have the devastating ability to manipulate electricity.
Evie Dasher has lost her father in the invasion, but she didn't know him well. Her mother is a respected hero. Evie and everyone else her age are experiencing PTSD.
Then Evie, attempting a normal night out, meets the gorgeous Luc. She suspects he's a Lux, but his is a deeper, darker secret.
I liked Evie and Luc, their evolving relationship, the fabulous idea of teens recovering from an ALIEN INVASION. Evie and Luc's friends are also entertaining. A romantic and suspenseful read for anyone who liked The Hunger Games.

White Cat by Holly Black

White Cat
Cassel Sharpe seems like a normal, if shady, teenager. But his world is an alternate reality. In this world, Workers (those who can use magic) are uneasily integrated into society. The only thing that keeps them from going darkside in most cases is the blowback--whenever someone uses magic, whether to influence people or reality, they suffer terrible repercussions.
Cassel's two brothers and his jailed mom are curse workers and not the upstanding kind. Cassel believes he's the only one in his family who isn't gifted . . . until he learns that a horrifying tragedy in his childhood might not have been what it seemed.
I loved this noir version of a magical, contemporary USA, where the protagonist is a trickster trying to survive a con he's twisting back onto the con artists.
For fans of The Raven Boys.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Ninth House
Galaxy Stern has had a violent and uncertain life, a life which ended with a series of murders that she survived. When she's offered a chance to attend Yale and better herself, she takes it, and is introduced to the Houses of the Veil the secret societies that practice magic for the benefit of the elite. She has joined House Lethe, a sort of police for the other Houses. Her tutor is Darlington, a charming and solitary young man, a gentleman scholar, who is only present in flashbacks. We don't learn until later what terrible fate has befallen him. It is this intriguing mystery, and Alex's determination to solve the murder of a girl she doesn't know, that drive the narrative. Alex is the very definition of an antihero. She's selfish and dark-hearted. But she's also a survivor, with wounds that haven't healed. She's basically a double-edged sword. As she navigates her way through the dead--who are both benevolent and horrifying--and fights her way to answers, another layer of mystery is revealed. A page-turner of a dark fantasy.

Mask of Shadows by Lindsey Miller

Mask of Shadows
Sal Leon is a thief who wants revenge on the people who destroyed their country. Sal is gender fluid and ferociously determined to become an assassin for the queen--one of the queen's premiere assassins, Opal.
What follows is Sal's navigating a brutal challenge--Sal must survive the other candidates, a fight to the death. Then there are the shadows, horrifying creatures who tore through Sal's country, literally ripping the skin off people to form an identity while whispering, "Who am I?" Yikes.
Sal is a charismatic, morally gray character who has to use wits and learned survival skills to overcome, while bonding with the other assassins and falling in love with a noble's scholarly daughter.
An entertaining addition to the assassins' club.

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

White Is for Witching
Atmospheric, moody, and haunting, set in Dover, England, the story surrounds a twin brother and sister living in a boarding house with their father. Eliot and Miranda are mourning their mother. The house, an ancestral home, has its own personality--a possessive and malevolent one.
Miranda and Eliot escape to separate colleges and the house takes its anger out on the immigrant housekeeper in a bizarrely horrifying manner. Hint: It uses a mannequin.
When the twins return home, Eliot is worried but oblivious to his twin's chaotic mental state. (She suffers from pica and hallucinations.) When she becomes intimate with a Black girl from school, the house, using the voice of Miranda's ancestors, becomes outright hostile.
It's an eerie, unsettling tale for anyone who loves haunted houses and Shirley Jackson.

The Court of Miracles by Kester Grant

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The Court of Miracles was supposed to be a haven for thieves, beggars, and prostitutes in Revolutionary era Paris. Students of the universities also mingled with these elements.
Nina Thenardier is a teenage girl who becomes the Black Cat after her older sister is sold by their thief of a father to a slaver. Nina becomes a sort of foster sister to young Ettie, and, after initially asking her to catch the slaver's interest, must use desperate measures to protect her.
Cleverly combining elements of Les Miserables with the French Revolution, the story excels in its depiction of this secret kingdom of criminals. The male leads who are Nina's foils are an assassin, a revolutionary, and a prince and they're all extremely interesting, well-drawn characters. I absolutely loved the world created in this book with its shady heroine who has a heart of gold.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

The Ten Thousand Doors of January
January Scaller is the ward of Mr. Locke, a wealthy and mysterious businessman in turn-of-the-century America. She is a solitary child in a big mansion. Her adventurous father occasionally visits, but doesn't seem interested in her.
As a young woman, January finds a book about a girl who discovers doors to other realms, a girl who travels, finding these doors, and visiting these other worlds. January learns that these doors, and that words, are magic. She must avoid a terrifying secret society that hunts her as she journeys on her own.
A paen to the power and the beauty of words, and family, this is a classic, with a ferociously bookish heroine straight from a Bronte novel. One of my favorite books.

The Accident Season by Moira Fowley-Doyle

The Accident Season
In an Irish town, Cara is seventeen and living with her family through another 'accident season', a time of year that is literally what it sounds like. Even her former stepbrother, Sam, is affected, as much as her sister and widowed mother. Only her best friend Bea isn't prone to accidents.
Cara is haunted by a girl named Elsie, who, weirdly, appears in all of the photographs Cara takes. As Halloween draws near and Cara and her friends plan the party of all parties, ghosts and secrets from the past begin to tinker with Cara's reality.
A Halloween story of family secrets, with a cast of interesting characters and a contemporary Irish setting. The relationships and the uncanny accident season are what made this book for me:)

Star Daughter by Shveta Thakrar

Star Daughter
Sheetal is a teenager living in New Jersey and has always known she is the daughter of a star. She can hear star song and longs for a world she has never seen--her estranged mother's world. She has a crush on a boy named Dev (who has a secret of his own) and a beloved best friend, Minal, who is inquisitive and willing to follow Sheetal anywhere.
Then Sheetal's power flares and hurts her father.
This becomes a story of finding oneself. Sheetal must travel to her mother's celestial home, with Minal, to learn how to control her power and heal her father. She must win a competition in order to do so.
Sheetal is resourceful and stubborn, navigating the celestial world and its tricky inhabitants, who see her as less because she is only half star. The celestial world is beautifully portrayed, I loved Sheetal's friendship with the roguish Minal, the tension between Sheetal and her mother's difficult family. A dazzling fairy tale reminiscent of Terri Windling and Patricia McKillip.