The Afterdark, by E. Latimer (Penguin)
After her twin sister drowns under questionable
circumstances, Evie questions whether the darkness she has always known lurks
inside her was responsible. In the blink of an eye, she gets shipped off to an
elite boarding school where her father is the principal. Northcroft, located on
a remote island and surrounded by dense, old-growth forest. Spooky things
happen, beginning with a nightly bell and shutters slamming down, to her father
refusing to see her, to a masked cult and mysterious warnings. To make matters
worse, Evie falls for glamorous film star Holland Morgan, not knowing that
Holland was her dead sister’s old flame. Every day, it seems, Evie discovers
another layer of creepiness. If the school and the members of the clandestine
mask-wearing “honor” society weren’t bad enough, the woods themselves are a
thousand times worse. Something is out there, something ancient and utterly
inhuman, something that Evie is increasingly unable to resist.
The Afterdark hits so many story tropes: it’s a school story
with a spooky cult, a lesbian romance, a tale of a teen struggling to break
free from a highly dysfunctional family, a Lovecraftian dark horror story, and
a murder mystery, all tied up with one cliffhanger plot twist after another. The
story grabbed me right away and kept me turning pages, and although I’m not a
typical horror reader, for me the dark fantasy elements enhanced and
intensified the story in appropriate and emotionally manageable ways. So don’t
pass up this marvelous book because of the genre.
No comments:
Post a Comment