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Book Review: Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

cover art for Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

HarperTeen, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0062894229

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook  ( Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com )

 

 

Shady Grove grew up in a haunted house, and her father owned a violin that could raise ghosts, but it disappeared when he died in a car accident when she was twelve. Like him, Shady is a talented bluegrass fiddle player, but she’s never gotten over her father’s death, and is obsessed with the violin.

 

After her father’s death, Shady’s mother remarried to his best friend, Jim. Shady, her troublemaking older brother Jesse, her toddler half-sister Honey, her mother, and Jim live in a trailer on the edge of town. Jim is an alcoholic with an anger management problem, and he and Jesse are always clashing.

 

Shady and her friends Orlando and Sarah enter a music competition at a local cafe. They discover Jim’s son Kenneth is also participating, as are his friend Cedar and Cedar’s sister Rose. Shady is impressed by Cedar and Rose’s playing (and a little by Cedar himself) but is unsure about asking to play with them out of loyalty to Sarah and Orlando. Jim and his older and more respectable brother Frank show up as well. Kenneth gets into an altercation with Jesse that ends with Kenneth in the emergency room. Jim and Jesse end up in a fight, Jesse storms out, and the next morning Jim is found dead, killed with a hammer. The logical conclusion is that Jesse did it in a fit of anger, but Shady refuses to believe that Jesse could be responsible and decides the only way to find out for sure is to find her father’s violin and raise Jim’s ghost for the true story. But there is a dark and terrifying price to pay for playing the violin.

 

Set in small-town Florida, Erica Waters tells this Southern Gothic tale of grief, guilt, shame, anger, and family secrets, with gorgeous prose. Her poetic language flows through wild areas, jolting both characters and readers with electrical shocks from emotional events. Hauntings unsettle, and Shady’s violin pulls her deep into shadows that may lead to her destruction… or to discover what her family has been hiding all these years.  Waters describes the setting in such a way that I could see stepping right in to the forest or climbing into the attic of Shady’s former house.

 

In addition to the ghosts, the mystery of Jim’s death, and the secrets of the house she grew up in, Shady has to navigate relationships. She has deep feelings for her best friend Sarah, but is getting mixed signals. She’s also attracted to Cedar, who loves the same music, and is waiting for Shady to figure out how she really feels. Sarah and Rose are both lesbians, but with very different personalities, and it’s nice to see varied representation there. While it’s more common to see gay and lesbian protagonists in YA fiction, bi protagonists (and characters) are less frequently seen. With bi erasure a problem in society as well as fiction, I was glad to see bisexual representation.

 

Ghost Wood Song is a beautifully, darkly told story filled with moments of terror and deep feelings of love, grief, obsession, and fear, most certainly worth its place on the Stoker ballot and an excellent contender for the award.

 

Contains: attempted suicide, violence, murder

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 

Editor’s note: Ghost Wood Song is a nominee on the final ballot for this year’s Bram Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. 

Posted on May 19, 2021 by , Reply

Graphic Novel Review: Spectre Deep 6 by Jennifer Brody and Jules Rivera

Spectre Deep 6 by Jennifer Brody and Jules Rivera

Turner, 2020

ISBN-13: 9781684424139

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

Spectre Deep 6 tells the story of a diverse team of black ops called “Spectres”, an elite squad of soldiers who died in the line of duty and were reanimated by military scientists as ghosts. Their mission is to carry out various illegal or secret missions for the United States government in exchange for day passes to “haunt” their previous lives. When the team takes care of a target, the victim simply appears to have had a stroke, heart attack, or other naturally caused death. Unfortunately, these missions also exhaust the powers of the Spectre team, rendering them needing “recharge”. The spirits are locked in containment, located in a secret military bunker under Area 51 ((of course) when they are not on duty.

Brody and Rivera include a diverse cast of characters for Spectre Deep 6. Captain Bianca Vasquez was an undercover agent who died as she was searching for her missing husband. Now she is a member of the six-person Spectre squad, and during her day-pass time, haunts her daughter, who is in a foster home as a result of both of her parents being missing or dead. John Song is a sarcastic Asian-American soldier with a volatile temper. The cat-loving Kim Masters is a Black agent who takes no crap. Bart Bartholomew, who was a surfer in his former life, loves video games and deeply misses his best friend… and the feeling is mutual. Kacey Flame is a beautiful pink-haired transgender woman who haunts her old place to keep those who she cared most for out of her old space, in case they can’t accept her for who she wanted to be in life. James Sparks is a Black former aircraft engineer who discovered some nasty secrets his boss was keeping, and which resulted in his death. At times, the teammates most definitely do not get along, as their personalities clash over personal ethics and codes of honor, but they always manage to get the job done. Once Bianca’s missing husband Zane enters the picture, things get more complicated.

The story was a bit slow going at first, but after the first chapter the pace picked up considerably. I would recommend this for readers who enjoy a good sci-fi ghost story. The characters are well-developed in such a short time, and Brody and Rivera devote plenty of space for readers to get a handle on the characters and their motivations. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Editor’s note: Spectre Deep 6 is a nominee on this year’s final ballot for the Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel. 

Posted on May 4, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

cover art for Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas ( Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

Swoon Reads, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-1250250469

Available:  Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Yadriel is a Latinx trans boy whose community lives in the cemetery and serves Lady Death. When they are fifteen, boys are presented to Lady Death for a blessing to become a brujo and receive a portaje, a dagger that allows them to draw blood to direct their magic so they can cut the ties between spirits and this world to send them to the afterlife before they become malevolent. At the same age, girls who go through the ceremony and receive the blessing become brujas and are presented with a rosary as their portaje, that allows them to heal using blood.  As a trans boy, Yadriel did not go through the girls’ ceremony as he was expected to do, but was not allowed to go through the boys’ ceremony to become a brujo because the community does not accept that he is a boy. Impatient to prove himself, Yadriel secretly goes through the ceremony to become a brujo.

When his cousin Miguel goes missing and is suspected dead, Yadriel searches for him in an old church on the cemetery property. Finding a necklace with a medallion, Yadriel makes a guess that it might be a way to summon Miguel’s spirit. Instead, he accidentally summons a teenage troublemaker from his high school, Julian, who refuses to move on to the afterlife until he knows if his friends are okay. Yadriel has to resolve things quickly and quietly, before his father finds out and Dia de los Muertos begins. There is something much more sinister and terrifying going on than the limited blood magic practiced by the brujx community.

Thomas interweaves issues and messages related to and positive representations of trans, gay, and lesbian characters in general and specifically in Latinx communities. Lady Death and the mythology of Yadriel’s community is not limited to one nationality– immigrants from many countries in the Latinx diaspora participate, and issues related to immigration (like whether the individuals are documented) curtail the options of the members in seeking help from the police, and this is all well-integrated into a unique storyline. There’s also a sweet love story of the kind that LGBTQ+ teens deserve to see more of. The only disorienting moment is near the end when there is a sudden switch in point of view from Yadriel to Julian, but that’s a minor quibble in a high-quality story that can sweep you out of the everyday with its magic. Highly recommended.

 

Contains: Violence, blood, attempted murder

 

Posted on November 29, 2020 by , Reply
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