In Nightfall by Suzanne Young

Published: 3/28/23Publisher: Delacorte PressAuthor: WebsiteInfo: Goodreads

Theo and her brother, Marco, threw the biggest party of the year. And got caught. Their punishment? Leave Arizona to spend the summer with their grandmother in the rainy beachside town of Nightfall, Oregon--population 846 souls.The small town is cute, when it's not raining, but their grandmother is superstitious and strangely antisocial. Upon their arrival she lays out the one house rule: always be home before dark. But Theo and Marco are determined to make the most of their summer, and on their first day they meet the enigmatic Minnow and her friends. Beautiful and charismatic, the girls have a magnetic pull that Theo and her brother can't resist.But Minnow and her friends are far from what they appear.And that one rule? Theo quickly realizes she should have listened to her grandmother. Because after dark, something emerges in Nightfall. And it doesn't plan to let her leave. (goodreads.com)

I had to give myself a little time before reviewing IN NIGHTFALL. I was so far into my feels with it I needed a passport to get back. I am all for Lost Boys-inspired books. It's pretty much a guarantee that I will pick it up. It's how I found the Blood Coven series by Mari Mancusi (after a referral from a friend) and MAYHEM by Estelle Laure. GIVE. IT. TO. ME. So when I saw that IN NIGHTFALL was Lost Boys-inspired, I went YES.Until I read the blurb.Why did the blurb take be aback? Because it's basically the plot of The Lost Boys. Down to moving from Phoenix to a small beach town in California, I mean Oregon. Commence rage.No, Donna! Don't! Don't judge it until you can read it! That might not be the case!So I read the first chapter preview.There was more rage.Why? Because it's the opening credits scene of The Lost Boys. Nearly to a T.THINGS AREN'T LOOKING GOOD.I'd requested the book as soon as I heard about it back in July or August. I just got the approval for it in March and I immediately started reading because I had to know.I HAD TO.And????I'll start with what I liked about it:Divorced from its source material, it's exactly the sort of YA horror I've been looking for in the current market. Not too deep, kind of kitschy, fun, spooky, underlying creepy. An all around good time. Doesn't require too much thought and gives me exactly what I was looking for. In that aspect, it nailed The Lost Boys right on the head.Unfortunately, it nailed everything else about The Lost Boys right on the script.IN NIGHTFALL isn't an homage to The Lost Boys. It's not inspired by. It IS. Young did not deviate from the plot of the movie at all. So readers, if you're familiar with The Lost Boys, you will know the entire plot of this book before even picking it up. You will know which character is which, what happens to who, every twist and turn, and how it ends. You already know how this book pans out. There aren't Lost Boys easter eggs in here. It's the whole damn rabbit. Characters, actions, scenes, character motivations, the blood-sucking Brady Bunch. It's all there.What's different about it? It takes place in Oregon and the vampires are chicks. That's about it.It's The Lost Boys without the personality of The Lost Boys. Gone is Joel Schumacher's sexiness, the dark undercurrent of the story wrapped in a pseudo-happy-go-lucky veneer, and the flash genius in the frying pan of the 80s to do something wholly unique. IN NIGHTFALL ends up being a pale, bland knock off that's disappointingly straight. Where Schumacher's movie was throbbing with queer subtext, Young's book gives mid-teens YA vibes in its heteronormativity. Of course, I can't forget the Frog brothers, I mean the gay podcasters that are the token gay comedic relief that exist to serve the main character. I've literally read better, more inventive TLB fanfic (and I've read A LOT of TLB fanfic). This book screams self insert Emerson sister fic.I was so, so hopeful that Young was going to do something different with it. Killer mermaids or sirens or selkies or something. Do something to make it actually her own story. Those were the vibes I was getting for the first, like, third of the book. NOPE. It's The Lost Boys, slightly tweaked.Who is this book supposed to be for? Because when the blurb is using comps like The Lost Boys and Buffy, are today's teens going to know what any of that is? Probably not, unless they have parents with taste. Those comps are for people my age, because this YA book isn't really being sold to teens, now is it? Says the teen librarians themselves, books like this are being written for the adults who buy them, not the teens who read them. The thing is, IN NIGHTFALL is actually a great book to fit in that space. The MC doesn't even have her license yet. This is actually a fantastic YA book FOR TEENS. But the marketing is targeting the nostalgia of the people with the bank accounts. I'm sure teen readers, especially younger teen readers, would love this book, but it has nothing to do with The Lost Boys or Buffy.It's just getting old that publishers are getting so risk averse with what they put out that they just keep regurgitating the same thing because it's safe. Young, with her impressive backlist, is as safe and as sure of a bet as one can get in publishing, which is why we're here. Her writing is fine. It's nothing to write home about, but she can string a sentence together. It gets the job done and moved me from one end of the book to the other. But this safety also guarantees that instead of a unique take on The Lost Boys, something that is genuinely a hat tip to the movie but stands on its own and speaks to a newer author's imagination and verve, we get barely conceived fanfiction that doesn't do anything with the source material except follow the movie's plot. I'll just watch the movie, thanks.PS: Where the hell does Buffy come into this? The fancy dress and vampire-staking at the end? Bit of a stretch.1.5I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah

Published: February 21, 2023Publisher: Wednesday BooksAuthor: WebsiteInfo: Goodreads

The town of Bishop is known for exactly two things: recurring windstorms and an endless field of sunflowers that stretches farther than the eye can see. And women—missing women. So when three more women disappear one stormy night, no one in Bishop is surprised. The case is closed and their daughters are left in their dusty shared house with the shattered pieces of their lives. Until the wind kicks up a terrible secret at their mothers’ much-delayed memorial.With secrets come the lies each of the girls is forced to confront. After caring for the other girls, Delilah would like to move on with her boyfriend, Bennett, but she can’t bear his touch. Whitney has already lost both her mother and her girlfriend, Eleanor, and now her only solace is an old weathervane that seems to whisper to her. Jude, Whitney's twin sister, would rather ignore it all, but the wind kicks up her secret too: the summer fling she had with Delilah's boyfriend. And more than anything, Bo wants answers and she wants them now. Something happened to their mothers and the townsfolk know what it was. She’s sure of it.Bishop has always been a strange town. But what the girls don’t know is that Bishop was founded on blood—and now it craves theirs. (goodreads.com)

There are going to be spoilers in this review. I don't think I can talk about the issues I had with it without spoiling. So if you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading now.WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS is Children of the Corn but with grown ass men instead of kids and sunflowers instead of corn. It certainly has the threads of being creepy but the motives, the underlying theme, and the character development all make this story fizzle out to little more than a disappointing deflated balloon.The underlying theme of Handmaid's Tale-esque subjugation of women (in this case without the forced birth and with ritualistic slaughter) is just a tired trope at this point, made all the more tired because we're still dealing with this nonsense today. So if the author isn't doing something particularly inventive with it, it's just old and boring and I absolutely found myself thinking "oh, this again?" when I was reading. From the intro I hoped it wasn't going to just be women and that the dude's wife was just convenient, but nope. It's women in perpetuity. So that's cool.When we discover that the girls' mothers are still alive, I was hoping for them to be incapacitated somewhere, but nope. They're all living together in a house, just sitting around and gardening, waiting for the day their daughters come through the corn, I mean, sunflower stalks to safety on their own. And the reason they didn't do anything? The sunflowers wouldn't let them. I'm sorry, what? The thing was, there was no reason for them leaving their daughters behind. They just up and left and saved themselves and hoped nothing bad would come of their kids. I'M SORRY, WHAT? And the girls were like oh yeah, totally. That's fine. We're cool. No worries. It was so absurd and so beyond the realm of suspension of disbelief that I couldn't. Those women didn't tear the earth apart trying to find a way to get to their daughters? THOSE WOMEN JUST UP AND LEFT THEM, SAVED THEMSELVES, AND CROSSED THEIR FINGERS THAT THEIR DAUGHTERS WOULD BE OKAY IN A TOWN THAT SYSTEMATICALLY SLAUGHTERS WOMEN? And they didn't contribute to that same patriarchal system . . . how? Either they didn't want their kids and were really good at pretending, or they're just awful parents and probably shouldn't have had them to begin with.And then the climax of the story was just one giant deus ex machina. The only character who did anything to save anyone was Bo, and it wasn't even on page. Not that I need blood and gore and vicious revenge or anything. But to have that pivotal moment that actually did save the girls just be fade to black was mind boggling to me. The rest of it, the ghosts just randomly appeared after not being present aside from a faint whisper the entire story and led them out of town. WHY NOW? There was no answer for that other than because reasons. Because the book needed to end and there was no real way for them to get out except for those ghosts, I guess.The town itself is, as I'm lead to believe, inaccessible to people from the outside and people inside can't leave. So . . . everyone's inbred? How many people can possibly be in that town, let alone people who are capable of procreating something other than a Hapsburg? I wasn't under any impression that Bishop was anything other than a modern, albeit rural, town. If they're cut off, how are they stocking their shelves? How do they have cars? Cell phones? Computers? Televisions? How does any of this exist in this town? It didn't even have a paved road. And apparently no real medical anything. This doesn't make any sense.The characters themselves were largely interchangeable. Bo was the only one who really stood out because she had some anger issues. But only just. The four of them, plus the three mothers, didn't appear all that necessary as stand-alone characters. I had a hard time keeping track of who was who pretty much up until the end, again, aside from Bo. Same thing with the guys. Even now I don't remember which is Evan and which is Caleb. They were interchangeable in the story.I'm not sure what the selling point of this book is. I'm guessing the language it's written in, but it's not something that stands out. I didn't find it particularly flowery in a way that I would enjoy. I could see it was trying. But among the very poorly built world, the tired tropes, the lackluster motivations, and the bland characters, the most beautiful writing in the world wouldn't have saved it for me. WHERE DARKNESS BLOOMS was just a total disappointment. So much potential and the execution was just undercooked and unseasoned, at best.It has nothing but five star reviews on NetGalley. That is very much not the case on Goodreads.  So either I'm about to ruin its curve on NetGalley, or the publisher is deleting anything less than glowing reviews of this book. 🧐1I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Seven Faceless Saints by MK Lobb

Published: February 7, 2023Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young ReadersAuthor: WebsiteInfo: Goodreads

In the city of Ombrazia, saints and their disciples rule with terrifying and unjust power, playing favorites while the unfavored struggle to survive.After her father’s murder at the hands of the Ombrazian military, Rossana Lacertosa is willing to do whatever it takes to dismantle the corrupt system—tapping into her powers as a disciple of Patience, joining the rebellion, and facing the boy who broke her heart. As the youngest captain in the history of Palazzo security, Damian Venturi is expected to be ruthless and strong, and to serve the saints with unquestioning devotion. But three years spent fighting in a never-ending war have left him with deeper scars than he wants to admit… and a fear of confronting the girl he left behind.Now a murderer stalks Ombrazia’s citizens. As the body count climbs, the Palazzo is all too happy to look the other way—that is, until a disciple becomes the newest victim. With every lead turning into a dead end, Damian and Roz must team up to find the killer, even if it means digging up buried emotions. As they dive into the underbelly of Ombrazia, the pair will discover something more sinister—and far less holy. With darkness closing in and time running out, will they be able to save the city from an evil so powerful that it threatens to destroy everything in its path? (goodreads.com)

If SEVEN FACELESS SAINTS started off as an adult novel and the author was advised to age the characters down to YA because the book would do better there, I would not be surprised. From the erratic application of ages (the characters seem to range in age from 16 to 19, I had an ARC so I hope that was smoothed out by the time it was published, and I mean a single character, not the cast of charaters ranged), to the cadence of their language, to how the characters viewed life, this just was not a YA novel and these were not teenage characters. I know people will argue, "oh they've been through a lot and they're just really mature because they were forced to be adults at much younger ages." No. A teenage mind put through trauma is still a teenage mind. Between the jobs these characters held (although not uncommon for YA authors to put teenagers in positions they would never, ever hold), how they processed the world around them, how they spoke about their youth, how they referenced each other, and how logical they seemed to act, it all points to these characters not actually being teenagers, but older characters given younger ages. Whether it's because these were originally older characters that were aged down, or the author doesn't really have a grasp of the YA voice, I don't know.There's next to no character development for either Damien or Roz. Damian's a weiner for most of the book, finally snapping at the end. Roz was just static. She didn't change at all. I guess she might have moved a millimeter by the end of the book, but that's a stretch. She was just a standoffish, unlikable character for most of the book. On top of that, she didn't have any skin in the story. Damian, at least, was propelled by his desire to not go back to war, so that incentivized him to solve the murders. If he didn't, he was getting deployed again. Roz was just along for the ride. She was shoehorned into Damian's story because what YA novel doesn't need a complicated love interest? But she served no actual function. She was never at any real risk of anything untoward happening to her. The murders were immaterial to her except for the fact that she kept shoving herself into the investigation. She just had no reason to be there.The rebel subplot was so far away from anything going on in the primary plot that I think the author forgot about it for a chunk of the story. Because the way it just like OH YEAH THIS IS GOING ON TOO at the end made it feel very superficial. It felt like this rebel thing had to happen in order to beef up the story, but it just wasn't very well-developed and despite half the book being in Roz's POV and she's supposed to be really involved in the whole thing, there's just not a whole lot about it in the story. The entire thing is a plot device to bring the story to its necessary conclusion.The world itself was eh. Solidly mediocre. I appreciated the Italian-ness of it, but that's about it. I didn't find it particularly good or unique or engaging.Overall, there just wasn't a whole lot to really like about SEVEN FACELESS SAINTS. It doesn't really do anything unique, the world is nothing to write home about, the characters are lackluster at best, the plot struggles to keep track of itself. The author, at least, could string a sentence together, but they weren't very engaging sentences. I have been struggling with YA fantasy for YEARS at this point, considering myself in a reading rut for that genre. I've just recently come to realize it's me. For some stupid reason I keep picking up these bland, basic, European-centric YA fantasy novels thinking they're going to be something different when they're just carbon copies of each other, playing off the same tropes, the same types of characters, the same worlds. Time for me to get off the continent.1.5I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks

Published: January 31, 2023Publisher: Henry Holt & CoAuthor: WebsiteInfo: Goodreads

The Urban Promise Prep School vows to turn boys into men. As students, J.B., Ramón, and Trey are forced to follow the prestigious "program's" strict rules. Extreme discipline, they’ve been told, is what it takes to be college bound, to avoid the fates of many men in their neighborhoods. This, the Principal Moore Method, supposedly saves lives.But when Moore ends up murdered and the cops come sniffing around, the trio emerges as the case's prime suspects. With all three maintaining their innocence, they must band together to track down the real killer before they are arrested. But is the true culprit hiding among them? (goodreads.com)

PROMISE BOYS had me guessing who did it the entire time. Pretty much until the killer was revealed, I was guessing. I literally had no idea who it was other than I figured it wasn't one of the three boys. Other than that, Brooks did an excellent job of setting up a school of red herrings for people to follow trying to figure out who killed Principal Moore.It's interesting because reading this, I couldn't help but think of Ron Brown College Prep the entire time. No relation to Promise, that I'm aware of, other than it's a school for predominantly Black boys to help them get the leg up in the world they need. Where Promise, at its end, did it through militaristic discipline, Ron Brown does it through love and giving these boys the attention and care they need that they wouldn't otherwise get in a public school setting. At least according to NPR's CodeSwitch. But having this understanding that there are schools like this, with this exact mission, helped root the story in reality even more for me.I could feel the frustration of each of these characters. Ramón couldn't dodge gang life association despite the fact that he wasn't in one. But having a cousin who is was enough. And Trey and JB are basically angry Black boys who had a grudge against the principal (along with a number of people). Circumstances set them up nicely to be suspects in Moore's murder.I liked the asides interspersed in the story from teachers, other students, neighborhood people about what could have gone down, what Moore was like, and what the boys were like to help paint a picture that I'll fall short of calling well-rounded. Hearsay doesn't really paint a well-rounded picture. But it added more context to the situation.My favorite was JB and Keyana. I don't normally get googly-eyed over YA relationships, but ugh. These two just had my heart. I loved when Keyana was like I need to know you have my back too if the tables were reversed (understanding how often black women get forgotten in situations like these), and JB replies:

…I would hoist the whole planet up on my back and carry it around the sun, if you so much as whispered for me to do it.

Misty-eyed punch to my gut. But I got misty-eyed for Trey and his uncle, especially when his uncle realized the error of his own way. I won't spoil it, but that realization in that relationship had my eyes watery. And I can't forget Ramón and his abuela and her pupusas. The absolute love and community around these little stuffed tortilla pancakes and how they drove community and Ramón's desire to do right by his abuela by opening his own restaurant just had me floating.I feel like the love and drive in PROMISE BOYS overshadows the horrible situation these boys are in. It's a circumstance we don't often get to see because we only see the police side of things. We don't see the human side of it. We don't see how accusations like this can be ruinous and the effect they have on boys like this and the lives they've built. PROMISE BOYS is riveting and will keep you turning the pages until you hit the back wall of the book. By then you'll be completely satisfied.4.5I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Black Queen by Jumata Emill

Pub Date: January 31, 2023Publisher: Delacorte PressAuthor: WebsiteInfo: Goodreads

Nova Albright, the first Black homecoming queen at Lovett High, is dead. Murdered the night of her coronation, her body found the next morning in the old slave cemetery she spent her weekends rehabilitating.Tinsley McArthur was supposed to be queen. Not only is she beautiful, wealthy, and white, it’s her legacy—her grandmother, her mother, and even her sister wore the crown before her. Everyone in Lovett knows Tinsley would do anything to carry on the McArthur tradition.No one is more certain of that than Duchess Simmons, Nova’s best friend. Duchess’s father is the first Black police captain in Lovett. For Duchess, Nova’s crown was more than just a win for Nova. It was a win for all the Black kids. Now her best friend is dead, and her father won’t fact the fact that the main suspect is right in front of him. Duchess is convinced that Tinsley killed Nova—and that Tinsley is privileged enough to think she can get away with it. But Duchess’s father seems to be doing what he always does: fall behind the blue line. Which means that the white girl is going to walk.Duchess is determined to prove Tinsley’s guilt. And to do that, she’ll have to get close to her.But Tinsley has an agenda, too.Everyone loved Nova. And sometimes, love is exactly what gets you killed. (goodreads.com)

Could NOT put this down. THE BLACK QUEEN is so twisty and turny, I was second guessing myself the entire time. I had the killers pegged from the beginning, but Emill kept throwing these diversions at me I was constantly thinking, "well, maybe not." He set so many characters up so well to be suspects that even if you think you know, you'll be guessing until the very end.I like how Emill didn't use a killer prologue here. I think it could have fit, but Nova isn't fodder for a story. She's a real person who Emill makes you love real quick before ripping her away. I liked that conscious choice to not make her a tool for other characters' growth right from the get-go.I also liked how Duchess and Tinsley started the story on these binaries, fitting into these very specific molds, and watching them get broken down over the course of the story. I think Tinsley was a little more self aware about the mold she was in than Duchess, just because Duchess suffered some truths about herself that really rocked her world and put her more in alignment with Tinsley than she ever wanted to be.Tinsley came off a little wish fulfillment in her character arc, but I don't fault Emill for having that kind of ideal for people to see the error of their ways. And for how wish fulfillment Tinsley played out to me, I think her situation was completely realistic. A lot of people just will not change course unless they're facing down something catastrophic, like a murder charge, that puts them in the shoes of the very people they've been complaining about in the first place. It's actually kind of sad that people need to be in these kinds of positions in order to change, and you can only hope it changes them. Sometimes it doesn't change anything, and it forces people to double down, which we also see in this story.I loved Duchess's reluctance to give Tinsley the benefit of the doubt. Especially with Ev in her ear, I don't fault her for her reluctance, but I'm glad she listens to her gut, even if that means going against the grain everyone expects her to travel on. I also love her grudging acceptance that maybe Tinsley is a product of her environment too. Add in the rather awkward situation of Duchess's dad being one of the lead cops on Nova's case and that adds a whole other level of complicated to Duchess's world view.It's just one thing after another in this story. If you're bored reading THE BLACK QUEEN, we didn't read the same book. It holds a mirror up to society while giving you this twisty, turny story that you desperately want to solve and will not rest until you do. Every single character will suck you into their story and make you question whether they are what they say they are, regardless of how long they're actually on the page. And the number of subplots on top of it all. SUPERB. I can't say enough good things about it.5I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.