A spirited retelling of lesser-known tales.
Jewish mythology, Yiddish theater, and New York City history meet in the present day.
The Sender sisters, Molly and Clara, are surprisingly successful 18-year-old co-managers of a revived Yiddish theater on Second Avenue in Manhattan. That’s because they’re also more than a century old; Molly and Clara are Estries, undead women from Ashkenazi lore who turn into blood-drinking monsters and can fly around on owls’ wings. They’ve done a good job of keeping their true identities a secret, but of course, new love interests complicate everything. Molly’s girlfriend, Anat, gets possessed by a dybbuk who might have ties to Molly’s past. Clara would insist that she doesn’t have feelings for Boaz, their Syrian Jewish employee, but his ability to see the dead and his family’s possession of a magic ring turn everyone’s world upside down. The plot becomes a bit rudderless once the action picks up in the various storylines, circling around several loci but never quite making the stakes and motivations feel clear or urgent. Debut author Vishny’s writing is at times muddy but mostly unobtrusive and is most successful when re-creating scenes from older history. Overall, the story excels at taking relatively hidden aspects of Jewish history, contemporary community life, and bubbe meises (or fables) and making them feel fresh and vibrant.
A spirited retelling of lesser-known tales. (author’s note) (Paranormal. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780063327306
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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
Intriguing but convoluted and underdeveloped.
When the veil between life and death is torn, threatening everything and everyone she loves, Célie is determined to take “till death do us part” as a challenge, her role as Bride of Death notwithstanding, in this sequel to The Scarlet Veil (2023).
Célie’s life has very abruptly gone to hell in a handbasket. She’s been turned into a vampire and abandoned by the mysterious and infuriatingly alluring man who turned her. Fearful of hurting her friends, she can’t eat or sleep, and she loathes herself and what she’s become. Célie is also being haunted by her late sister, Filippa. The dead are walking, something is going wrong with magic, and Death himself has manifested in corporeal form to claim his due. Only Célie can mend what’s been broken—but at what cost? This sequel picks up without much time spent reorienting readers to plot points or character dynamics. As in the first book, the drama spools on for too long, only properly picking up momentum about two-thirds of the way through the book. What starts as a slow-burn romance soon becomes quite the opposite, and although the stakes are generally higher than before and there are some very touching moments, the narrative never quite comes together in a satisfying way, and the worldbuilding and characters feel shallow and lack sufficient context. Most characters are light-skinned.
Intriguing but convoluted and underdeveloped. (Paranormal. 16-18)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780063258808
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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