DEAD GIRLS DON'T DREAM

There are ghosts in the woods…but they’re not the worst things out there.

Their mother, who struggled with addiction, has skipped town, so 17-year-old Riley Walcott lives on the edge of Voynich Woods with her 10-year-old sister, Sam, and their uncle. Uncle Toby makes a living giving tours of the woods to tourists who are morbidly interested in the many people who have disappeared there. One day, Sam wanders off during a tour, looking for the Wishing Tree, another one of the woods’ mysteries. Riley follows to keep an eye on her but ends up getting lost herself. She stumbles across the elusive Wishing Tree—and is promptly murdered by people in masks. Shortly after, Madelyn, who lives in the woods with her abusive witch mother, revives Riley with her own magic. But—at Riley’s own invitation—something attached itself to her before she came back to life. As events bring the two girls closer together, they each seek an escape—Riley from being another Voynich Woods mystery and Madelyn from her power-hungry mother. Cipri’s young adult debut is a coming-of-age tale that’s dripping with dark magic, steeped in mother-child trauma, and brimming with feminine power. Readers get a strong sense of place and characters from the text, which candidly reveals the two protagonists’ complicated inner emotional lives. Even the more outrageously fantastical elements fit naturally into this world. Characters largely present white.

A stellar example of how the horror genre can embody authentic emotional experiences.