An atmospheric treat for readers who don’t suffer from squeamishness.
Teen musicians end up stranded at a haunted house that’s out of an urban legend.
After their car breaks down on the way to a music festival, Haden Romero and her Phantomic bandmate and best friend, Kizi Kennedy-Oshima, have to hitch a ride on the tour bus belonging to Haden’s childhood reality show co-star and nemesis, Deacon Rex, who’s originally from London. Making things worse, Deacon’s band has a new drummer: Cairo Martin, former Phantomic member and Haden’s ex-girlfriend. The bus goes off course and crashes, separating the teens and dumping them in a canyon near a swamp where mysterious white gravel paths lead to a lit-up manor house. From interstitial chapters, readers get glimpses of the house’s supernatural history and clues to the danger the characters are in, even as they try to rationalize their increasingly disturbing experiences. As well as delightfully deployed slow-burn haunted-house fare, such as signs that someone else is in the house with them, the text revels in body horror; sensitive readers are warned away by the detailed content note preceding the story. The story delves into complicated friendship dynamics and what motivates the young people’s dreams of stardom. Interludes describing found footage prevent the claustrophobia from becoming stale, and the ending is bold and definitive. Deacon is white, Cairo is Black, Kizi presents Japanese American and white, and Haden’s surname may cue her as Latine.
An atmospheric treat for readers who don’t suffer from squeamishness. (Horror. 15-adult)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063355248
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter.
After a Nigerian British girl goes off to an exclusive boarding school that seems to prey on less-privileged students, she discovers there might be some truth behind an urban legend.
Ife Adebola joins the Urban Achievers scholarship program at pricey, high-pressure Nithercott School, arriving shortly after a student called Leon mysteriously disappeared. Gossip says he’s a victim of the glowing-eyed Changing Man who targets the lonely, leaving them changed. Ife doesn’t believe in the myth, but amid the stresses of Nithercott’s competitive, privileged, majority-white environment, where she is constantly reminded of her state school background, she does miss her friends and family. When Malika, a fellow Black scholarship student, disappears and then returns, acting strangely devoid of personality, Ife worries the Changing Man is real—and that she’s next. Ife joins forces with classmate Bijal and Benny, Leon’s younger brother, to uncover the truth about who the Changing Man is and what he wants. Culminating in a detailed, gory, and extended climactic battle, this verbose thriller tempts readers with a nefarious mystery involving racial and class-based violence but never quite lives up to its potential and peters out thematically by its explosive finale. However, this debut offers highly visually evocative and eerie descriptions of characters and events and will appeal to fans of creature horror, social commentary, and dark academia.
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250868138
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
This fresh reworking of a Greek myth will resonate.
An otherworldly Latinx retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in the South Bronx.
Pheus visits his father in the Bronx every summer. The Afro-Dominican teen is known for his mesmerizing bachata music, love of history, and smooth way with the ladies. Eury, a young Puerto Rican woman and Hurricane Maria survivor, is staying with her cousin for the summer because of a recent, unspecified traumatic event. Her family doesn’t know that she’s been plagued since childhood by the demonlike Ato. Pheus and Eury bond over music and quickly fall in love. Attacked at a dance club by Sileno, its salacious and satyrlike owner, Eury falls into a coma and is taken to el Inframundo by Ato. Pheus, despite his atheism, follows the advice of his father and a local bruja to journey to find his love in the Underworld. Rivera skillfully captures the sounds and feels of the Bronx—its unique, diverse culture and the creeping gentrification of its neighborhoods. Through an amalgamation of Greek, Roman, and Taíno mythology and religious beliefs, gaslighting, the colonization of Puerto Rico, Afro-Latinidad identity, and female empowerment are woven into the narrative. While the pacing lags in the middle, secondary characters aren’t fully developed, and the couple’s relationship borders on instalove, the rush of a summertime romance feels realistic. Rivera’s complex world is well realized, and the dialogue rings true. All protagonists are Latinx.
This fresh reworking of a Greek myth will resonate. (Fabulism. 14-adult)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0373-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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