An engaging tale with shades of horror and well-drawn characters.
In Hotes’ (Cyborgia, 2015, etc.) YA mystery, a cemetery excursion by a group of Seattle teens unearths a few buried secrets.
Fifteen-year-old Josie Jameson’s plan for Halloween isn’t mere trick-or-treating. She and her lifelong pals, Casey, Seth, and Blaze, head to Lakefront Cemetery, the resting place of Josie’s late mom, Sarah. Josie believes that Halloween is an ideal night to “feel” her mom’s spirit. But a strange, gray cat leads her to an older tombstone with peculiar markings and no apparent name on it. Her friends also discover intriguing gravesites: Casey finds a child’s; Blaze, a priest’s; and Seth, a military veteran’s. Each teen feels compelled to learn more, and they receive some help from the cemetery caretaker, Grace. Later, Josie finds a letter from her mother, hidden in a picture frame, which the latter wrote after she received her cancer diagnosis. In it, Sarah purports to know magic and cryptically asks Josie to locate a special object and bury it next to her remains. The process of resolving the various mysteries ultimately leads to feuding among the friends. In this novel, Hotes includes plenty of spooky elements, including stories of witchcraft, crows that attack Josie, and, at one point, the appearance of Sarah’s ghostly figure. However, it’s the author’s attention to characterization that truly drives the tale. For example, it’s revealed that in the six years since Sarah’s death, Josie has repressed her grief while caring for her little brother, Owen, and their perpetually despondent father. Hotes offers meticulous and engrossing scenes showing how Josie gradually begins to mourn and how her friends sort out their own personal problems; for instance, Casey feels that her parents neglect her in favor of her athletic brother. As a result, the story is generally gloomy in tone, but it does have a few bright spots, including hints of a potential romance between Josie and one of her friends. There’s an effective twist near the end, and the supernatural elements leave room for expansion in future installments.
An engaging tale with shades of horror and well-drawn characters.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9987199-0-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Storm Mystery Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Askew is a compelling, almost shamanistic figure (not another Skellig, but close), and both in tone and locale this powerful...
Almond (Skellig, 1999) spins teenagers of very different backgrounds and experience into a whirl of ghosts and dreams, stories-within-stories, joy, heartache, and redemption.
In order to be able to care for his newly widowed grandfather, Kit has moved with his parents to the town of Stoneygate, perched in desolate decline on top of a maze of abandoned coal mines. He is soon drawn to follow wild, unstable, aptly named John Askew into a game called “Death” that leaves him sealed up in a tunnel; Kit emerges from the darkness with images of children and others killed in the mines flickering at the edge of his sight, and a strange, deep affinity for Askew. Inspired by Askew’s brutal family life, and gifted with a restless, brilliant imagination, Kit begins a prehistoric quest tale involving two lost children—a story that takes on a life of its own. Setting his tale in a town where the same family names appear on both mailboxes and tombstones, and where dark places are as common as sad memories, Almond creates a physical landscape that embodies the emotional one through which his characters also move, adding an enriching symbolic layer by giving acts and utterances the flavor of ritual.
Askew is a compelling, almost shamanistic figure (not another Skellig, but close), and both in tone and locale this powerful story is reminiscent of Alan Garner’s Stone Book quartet. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: March 7, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-32665-3
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A teenager finds his way out from overwhelming grief in this poignant story from Hawes. Franklin takes his funny, beloved classmate Rosey Mishimi’s death in a car crash so hard that six months later he’s still mired in depression, walled off from his mother, therapist, and friends, filling his journal with present-tense memories. Then Rosey reappears, almost her old bubbly self but insubstantial, invisible to everyone else—except, perhaps, her dying Japanese grandmother. Is she a ghost, or just a figment? While he doesn’t entirely rule out the latter, Franklin is eager to have Rosey back on any terms, despite the understandable dismay of those around him. In the end, it doesn’t matter; Rosey fades away, but slowly enough to give Franklin a chance to say goodbye, to understand that she will always be with him, and to accept the fact that he still has a life to live. Hawes keeps Rosey’s exact nature ambiguous without being coy; that, along with the distinct characters and a caring supporting cast, make this a thoughtful variation on the often-explored theme of coping with loss. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8027-8685-5
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
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