I didn’t even mention my favorite part of the story, which comes in the funeral chapter.

100. Grim – Sara B. Elfgren

Kasper is born into a Swedish death metal legacy that he isn’t sure he knows how to handle or even just what to do with himself in general. He’s in art school and about to finish, but he’s not doing the kind of work he thinks is worthwhile. His dad was in one of the most infamous Swedish death metal bands, the short-lived but high impact Dark Cruelty, at his age and Kasper is named after the infamous lead singer Grim’s real name. Grim, of course, is a metal legend in no small part because he died under mysterious circumstances before even turning 20 or before their EP could really get out, that being the first Swedish death metal EP.

Kasper gets a job because of his stepbrother at an amusement park and ends up, because of the notoriety of his dad’s band, in the house of horrors style attraction, which gives him a friend group of the other workers aka Demons and he starts having weird dreams and weird experiences like trying to trust new friends and he knows it’s all connected to his namesake and the weird circumstances of his death. He’s gone through serious depression before, and so he doesn’t really know what or who he can trust, including himself. And when he decides he needs to try to figure this all out with the help of Iris and his dad’s bandmates while they plan a 30 year reunion, things get creepy and scary and also smell gross. And that’s without the little snot, now old snot, Malte the shitty one out of the band who came in late and was a bad dude who was okay at guitar and Ossian, the other band-child, the first one, who is now singing for the reunion and is both a dick and has the reputation of being an enigma. Ossian is on a similar quest as Kasper, but he chose down.

There are occult themes, similarities to the antics of Norway’s 1990s black metallers that were quite noticeable even though this is Sweden and death metal, the realities of being in bands and having some infamy and becoming an actual adult after, and the time line goes back and forth between when Grim was alive and Kasper’s perspective. And Kasper is also worried about working at the haunted house attraction and remaining a functioning human being and artist while having all the weight of the past poking at him. I found this to be one of the best books I read this year. I’m very pleased I found it and I am always skeptical when something seems like it includes too many things I care a lot about.

Grim is also one of very few books that can have an ending which involves a lot of the action being off page and I did not care because of how well the rest of the book sets it up. It’s funny, too, because it is marked as YA, but it’s on that weird borderline where there are several teenagers in it, in two different time periods no less, but they’re older than 17 and way less dramatic than they tend to be in a lot of YA. This may be because the ladies in here weren’t coming into some ancient birthright or even the manic depressive/pixie dream girl type, they were very grounded with ambitions and jobs and I super appreciated it as a woman who loves metal. That’s right, band tees and the right band tees, not just stereotype groupie attire, band tee women exist too as actual listeners.

Also, this is actually from Sweden and I’m so glad we’re getting more and more translations into English. So glad. It’s not just mysteries and lit fiction! Now we too can have YA novels with metal and posers alike from the home of metal’s evolution/descent, depending on who you are listening to, into darkness.

 

So, Snuffy and Thorfy may not really be “working” at this fun house, per se, but Thorfy is watching out for the scent of unfinished occult rituals and Snuffy is taking down the very structure they’re stuck with. They’re prepared.