What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
► UNSOLVED: One specific book
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Juvenile Horror/ Fantasy? Child character facing the prospect of being held captive and doomed to stare into a monster's face forever. Read around 2007-2013.
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Kris, thanks for the questions!! This was likely a chapter book: if not, it would have been a short, but text-heavy story— not a picture book. If there were illustrations, they would have been few and far between, and almost certainly in black-and-white.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember any illustrations, so I’m not able to confirm if there *were* any. (If there were, they would have fit the description above.)
Sorry for how little I’m able to recall— like I said, a real shot in the dark. Thank you again for your interest, and I hope this was helpful in part!!
Can you remember anything about the cover or the context in which you read it? (Library book, school library, new release, etc.), Atbash?Anything more about the story's setting - urban or low fantasy, or high fantasy? Modern or medieval?
(edit: Nice solve on the Avalon: Web of Magic thread, btw!) ;)
(Thanks, Capn! o7)It was likely a school library book (upper elementary or middle), because I think I would have kept the book if I had owned it as a kid (unless the rest of the text was kind of meh to little me and I gave it away? Unlikely, I think, but if that would have been the case, it would have been a Scholastic order catalogue-type book from that ‘06-‘13 era. As a library book, it could have been older).
Unfortunately, I’m afraid I can’t say anything definitive about the setting, since my memory isn’t certain enough to say one way. I’m tentatively leaning towards low fantasy/fantasy intrusion, but take that with a grain of salt— it could have been high fantasy, just with this particular situation being foreign and dreadful to the child. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t urban fantasy, though, and my gut’s telling me it leaned more old-fashioned than modern or anything close to sff, though I don’t remember enough to know if that was fantasy-medieval or just, like, a setting that felt kind of old to a kid born in the aughts.
Thanks for the interest— I know this response is less than ideal, but I hope it’s more illuminating than obfuscating!! Let me know if there’s any other kind of detail I can try to dredge up.
Maya– not the one, unfortunately, but Ness is exactly the kind of author I would have been reading in middle school. I still have the Chaos Walking trilogy tucked away in the back of my shelf. In fact, as I was reading through A Monster Calls this evening, I was wracking my brain to figure out if I had read it or not. (The beginning stuff with Lily felt very familiar, and some of his conversations with his dad, but most of the rest felt very new to me. Either my brain was just picking up on common tropes and painting it as vague recognition, or this was a book I hadn't finished before the due date and got too embarrassed to check out again. Middle school.)If it's a helpful distinction: the monster from my mystery book was much more antagonistic than the Green Man of A Monster Calls and his relationship with Conor. (view spoiler) the monster was possessive of the child in the book I'm thinking of, wanting to take them away and keep them, specifically to hold them and have them stare into their face for eternity, and the child was equal parts disgusted and terrified by this.
I think the monster's face may have been described as pale or white in some way. It's also possible– and I'm less sure about this one– that the place the monster was going to hold them may have been underwater? Or maybe "deep" and "dark" and "inescapable" is just translating to underwater in my mind. But some kind of hidey-hole or lair like that.
Despite that, though, thank you so much for the suggestion, both because it was a good read from an old beloved author that hits way harder now than it would have back then and because it coincidentally touches on ideas that I've been thinking about lately. Much appreciated!!
There was a book I read as a child (would have been between 2006ish and 2013ish. Apologies for the long range), which must have been either juvenile horror or fantasy, and I can remember nothing except for the two lines that are haunting me. It's towards the end of the story, and a character (can't even remember if it was a boy or a girl, but probably a young girl?) is being threatened with eternal captivity by some monstrous being (possibly as a consequence of failing some sort of challenge); specifically, I remember the line being something about the child and the monster being alone, forever, in the dark, and being forced to stare into the monster (demon? ghost?)'s face for all time. The kid thinks something about how they think they'd "die of fright," in (almost positive!) those words.
I don't think it was textually a forced marriage, but it certainly had that feeling to little me, if that's any help. If nothing else, I know it's a book; my vague memories are of text specifically, not of voices or faces or images. Any and all suggestions are welcome and appreciated.