Plot Summary:  Coming home from a party, Jack is kidnapped by a predator.  He manages to escape telling  no one except his best friend, Connor.  Later when Connor and Jack stumble across the same man, he ends up dead.  Travelling to England to look at boarding schools, Jack arrives in London a few days before Connor.  A strange man gives him  a pair of glasses showing an alternate post-apocalyptic world where Jack is trying to save two young boys while Connor has turned into a monster.  Jack wants to look away but he can’t.  The glasses call to him, and even as he looks through them, Jack wonders what is real and what isn’t.  Is he going crazy?  Or is his world?

Critical Analysis:  Interestingly enough for me, this book feels like a natural progression following Smith’s last book, In the Path of Falling Objects.  As with Objects, there is a real feel of the west here, although in this case, it feels more like a shriveled up ghost town and less like seeking a new (better) life.)  But even more so, Objects dealt with the scary heart pounding thrill of escaping from a mad serial killer.  Here Smith takes us one step closer to the darkness–what if we escape the serial killer only to discover there are even worse things in the world, that is, if the world we are in is even real?

I had a hard time reading this book.  It was so dark and so disturbing I wasn’t sure I wanted to finish it.  And yet, the character of Jack was vulnerable and needy and I had to know what happened to him, that he came out okay in the end.  I felt his fear, at the noises, his longing, his need to pick up the glasses one more time, his loss when he would come back to the present and couldn’t remember anything that had happened in the interim.  I find the juxtaposition of elements here to be as complex as they are surreal–a mix of teenage boys being boys and the darkness that is always out beyond the edge coming closer, threatening to take over.  The ambiguity is as sweet as it is frustrating.  What is real and what is just in Jack’s head?  This may be the first book in years that gets an almost immediate reread so I can soak more of it in.

Review Excerpts:  ”This bloody and genuinely upsetting book packs an enormous emotional punch. Smith’s characters are very well developed and the ruined alternate universe they travel through is both surreal and believable.”–Publisher’s Weekly

“Graphic and nightmarish, this will find a receptive audience of older teens who are fans of Stephen King’s darkest horrors….the story is suspenseful and deeply disturbing, written with multiple layers that will have readers arguing about what the apocalyptic scenes in Marbury are really all about.”–VOYA

“This is a haunting psychological drama, told in very adult language and descriptions that nonetheless is impossible to put down. Not for the fainthearted or the young, this is an incredibly well written story of emotional demons that is hard to forget.”–Children’s Literature

“An engrossing horror/fantasy hybrid, this page-turner will be best appreciated by those with a taste for ambiguous endings….Nightmarish imagery is chillingly effective, and the pacing superbly builds suspense.”–Kirkus Reviews

“This title will keep readers enthralled with its well-developed characters and unique plot…The novel is not an easy read, but it is one that will keep teens hooked….”–School Library Journal

“Mixing a trauma reckoning with dark, apocalyptic fantasy and notes of psychological horror, this commandeering novel’s multiplicity is elusively complex yet never complicated: although the many gut-quivering story elements are not clearly defined, they always speak to each other, and Smith wisely leaves much up to the reader.”–Booklist

Reviewed from publisher provided advanced copy.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Plot Summary:  Aging rocker Judas Coyne is a collector of the odd, the strange, and the macabre–a cannibal cookbook, a snuff film.  He also collects girlfriends, calling each after the state where they are from.  When his assistant tells him about a ghost for sale on an internet auction site, Coyne is mildly interested and tells him to buy it.  When an old man’s black suit is delivered shortly thereafter in a black heart shaped box,  the ghost that accompanies it is not a friendly Casper type.  He and current girlfriend Georgia travel cross country to try and find a way to escape the ghost.  Judas cannot escape his past, and will need to come to terms with himself, with Georgia, with past girlfriend Florida if he has any hope of staying alive.

Critical Analysis:  I should preface this by saying that I don’t usually choose horror when I pick out what to read.  I also don’t like most horror movies.  I think, for me, it has to do with suspension of disbelief.  If the situations, characters are too unrealistic, I find it jarring (and in the case of some horror movies, silly.)

But Hill, he hooks you and reels you in before you have time to think about the details.  The pace of the story is unrelenting, and awful and horrible things follow one after the other.  But somehow, in between, we see Judas’ past, vignettes of his time with Florida.  We see Georgia’s compassion and strength of will, and most of all, a kind of horror that stems from a diabolical plot for revenge and that you feel deep in your chest.

I don’t want to say too much, I don’t want to spoil the details.  I will say that the audio book was especially creepy (to actually hear the ghost speak…) and not to belabor the Stephen King connection, but teens who love King’s early work will love this too.  (Thanks Dia Reeves for suggesting titles outside my normal reading range…you haven’t steered me wrong yet.)

Review Excerpts:  ”Much will be made of the kinship of Hill and his superstar father, Stephen King, but Hill can stand on his own two feet. He’s got horror down pat, and his debut is hair-raising fun.” –Kirkus Reviews

“…a fast-paced plot that crackles with expertly planted surprises and revelations….believably complex emotional lives that help to anchor the supernatural in psychological reality….His subtle and skillful treatment of horrors that could easily have exploded over the top and out of control helps make this a truly memorable debut.”–Publisher’s Weekly

“Predictable at times, the book has genuinely touching emotional moments as well as action-packed confrontations with the dead.”  -Library Journal

Reviewed from public library audio book.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

Plot Summary:
Bliss Inthemorningdew’s hippie parents have taken her off the commune and dropped her at her ever-so proper grandmother’s house on their way to Canada to protest the war in Vietnam. She hates to admit it, but television and warm showers and real soap are things she realizes that she likes.  Attending an exclusive private school, complete with cliques, outcasts, and weird voices only she can hear?  Maybe not as much.  This is a story about true friends, false friends, first love and girls who will do anything to be popular.

Critical Analysis:
I may not be the best judge of what makes a good horror book.  I have never been one to be scared of bloody or gory movies.  I find things in the realm of the possible much scarier than things that could never be.  That being said, there is a real creepy vibe to Bliss.  It feels like Mean Girls meets Carrie meets Heathers or maybe The Craft.  And I make those comparisions deliberately, because the author’s use of black pages between the chapters feels like the part of a movie between scenes. Fade to black… It is quite effective actually for moving the book forward.  The quotes on those black pages are almost as creepy as the story itself (and most of them from the Andy Griffith Show, no less). The mysterious diary pages start to creep in and up the tension.  Through it all is a portrayal of the times–the war, segregation in schools, Charles Manson murder spree and trial.

Normally, when I review a book like this, I think about it from the teen perspective.  Will teens like this?  I think so, the naive girl at a new school trying to navigate cliques and crushes will appeal to many, as will the awesome cover. Chances are this book will jump off the shelf all by itself (now that would be creepy…) However, when I finished this book, I was left with a lot of “adult” thoughts about it. Many, many reviewers and librarians are going to read this and say how great it is that there is real horror being written for teens these days. Whereas I read it and thought how ingenious, Myracle has shown how horrorifying high school and cliques and trying to be popular really are, by taking the popularity contest and making it sinister, and by contrasting the weird events at the school the weird events in the greater world. Which is more horrifying? Charles Manson or doing anything to be popular? Race issues or being everyone’s best friend? But I am afraid, that like great YA writers who couch their issues in humor and wit, she and Bliss may be dismissed as just another horror story. Which would be a shame.

Connections:

• Pair this with Carrie by Stephen King and Tribes by Arthur Slade
• Watch the movies Carrie, Heathers, or Mean Girls