The Daughters of Block Island

by Christa Carmen

It will hold her within its walls until her reason for coming to the island disintegrates beneath her. It is claustrophobia and decay and tragedy too intense for her fragile, newly recovered self to take.

Aileen says in a voice like pebbles dragged by the tide,

Why does she constantly do things that make her feel so foolish?

Very relatable Blake

She will bring her cup of—what does The Haunting of Hill House’s protagonist, Eleanor Vance, call it? Her cup of stars?—upstairs, and work out her plan for the rest of the morning.

I LOVE HILL HOUSE !!

The dreadful wind and rain are keeping her tethered to the earth. Without them, she fears she’ll float out of her skin and up over the island like a discarded balloon.

So Aileen is shifting the furniture around while Blake sleeps now? She’s already decided that she’s losing it, but could the complete mental collapse wait until after breakfast?

Oh this does read like Hill House

While Blake has wondered several times since arriving at White Hall when the floor would open with a great, screaming split of marble and plunge her into an abyss, she wouldn’t mind if it happened at this very moment.

Say what you will about Blake but she is relatable

“Hon, will you take Aileen’s new pet to the restaurant with you?

Maybe you get bad reviews because you’re a jerk to your guests

Continue the downward spiral she’s been on since she realized a can of beer or a tablet of Xanax made her memories of orphanages and brutish foster mothers turn as sepia-toned and serene as the childhood photographs she never got to have?

“I don’t think Maureen should see you getting out of my truck. It might start things off on a weird foot.

You have quite the reputation around her don’t you This makes you look even more like her dad

Because for all her self-hatred and misery and dissociation and depression, she wants, very much, to live.

Something clicks behind her, and Thalia turns, but it’s just the room. Settling. Or, not settling. Waiting. Persisting in its energy. And angry she’s discovered one of its secrets.

Middle-Grade Fantasy Featuring LGBTQ Characters—

Omg Percy Jackson shout out

1989, Thalia thinks. The year I was born.

Okay taylor swift

I bow to a God not of my understanding, but of my imagination, as insufficient a replacement as the playhouse-size replica of a grand mansion.

I’m on my way to confession; you’re on your way back outside, aboveground, into the light.

When Thalia bursts into Sarah and Paul’s house with suitcase in hand, Sarah’s husband is waiting with a wire hanger, drill, flashlight, saw, and blowtorch.

We love a team player

Thalia is so shocked by the woman’s allegations of violence that it takes her a moment to remember she had drugged her sangria.

The sun doesn’t come out. Not yet. That would be a cliché unworthy of the dark, terrifying story they’ve somehow lived through. But Thalia thinks it will. If not today, or tomorrow, then soon.