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Book Review: Women in Horror Month: The Year I Flew Away by Marie Arnold

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The Year I Flew Away  by Marie Arnold

Versify, 2021

ISBN-13 : 978-0358272755

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Ten-year-old Gabrielle has left her home, family, and friends in Haiti to live in America with family she barely knows. Arriving in New York City in the winter, she is being bullied, having a hard time learning and understanding English and fitting in. She knows better than to trust a witch, but determined to be accepted, she accepts three slices of mango from the witch Lady Lydia. Each piece Gabrielle eats will grant a wish, but take something else away.

Gabrielle is a character who squeezes everything she can out of life. At the beginning of the book, she is mischievous and playful, active, curious, imaginative, loving, strong-minded, and brave. Marie Arnold sets her story to be descriptive of all the senses: flavors, textures, colors, and smells.  As much as Gabrielle loves her home, there is still poverty, hunger, and violence, and her parents, unable to get papers for themselves, decide to send her to America on her own, to stay with her uncle’s family. The qualities that serve Gabrielle well in Haiti, though, aren’t appreciated or apparent in New York City.

When she meets the witch, Lady Lydia, Gabrielle is wary, but after turning Lady Lydia away several times, Gabrielle finally decides she wants to belong enough to accept the consequences. Lady Lydia warns Gabrielle that if she eats all three pieces of the mango, she will have to give her essence to Lady Lydia. Gabrielle wishes for perfect English, and gains friends (Carmen and a talking rat named Rocky) but she also loses understanding of her home language, Haitian Creole, meaning she can no longer speak to or understand her family. What will the next wish take away? Gabrielle, along with help from her friends, must save herself and her family from Lady Lydia and figure out how to balance fitting in as an American with pride in her Haitian identity.

Arnold does a really wonderful job depicting the varying characters in the book, and addresses skillfully tough issues like racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. She presents a rounded picture of Gabrielle’s aunt and uncle, Carmen’s large family, and even the girl who bullies her. The tricky Lady Lydia is dramatically and vividly depicted, as is her nearly completed and disturbing spell. This is an entertaining, thoughtful, witchy, #OwnVoices book for middle grade students, and although the protagonist is a little young, could also be enjoyed by middle schoolers. Highly recommended for ages 8–12.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on February 7, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Lakewood: A Novel by Megan Giddings

cover art for Lakewood by Megan Giddings

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Lakewood  by Megan Giddings

Amistad, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0062913197

Available: Hardcover, audiobook, Kindle edition

 

After her grandmother dies, college student Lena discovers her disabled, neurologically impaired mother is unable to pay her bills or afford the medication she needs to manage her disability. So when she is recruited for a research study on memory for a substantial sum of money she pushes her reservations to the side, signs an NDA and paperwork stating her agreement to any procedure the study may require, drops out of school, and tells her mother and friends she has a new, well-paid job in the small town of Lakewood as an employee at a warehouse. Bizarre psychological testing, vaccines, pills, induced isolation, and hallucinations become normalized as different test subjects come and go. Realizing that something must be very wrong, Lena attempts to question observers and participants in the study and to find information online, but is blocked at every turn, until finally she discovers that unethical government experimentation on Black people has historical precedent. Despite her unsettling findings, Lena continues to participate in the study so her mother can keep her health insurance and pay the bills.

Obviously inspired by the Tuskegee experiment and other research studies that exploited Black people in the United States, as well as the Flint water crisis, Lakewood carries that legacy forward into the present, through generations of trauma. Ir is timely in its exploration of scientific racism, the drastic actions family members will take to help ill and disabled family members afford healthcare, and government gaslighting and neglect of the study participants and their own health.

Told from Lena’s point of view, this history metamorphoses into a personalized, hallucinatory, and terrifying situation that will appall, disturb, and shock the reader as the layers peel away. Highly recommended.

 

Contains: body horror, mutilation, murder, gore, violence, medical experimentation

 

Posted on January 23, 2021 by , Reply

Book Review: Amari and the Night Brothers (Supernatural Investigations #1) by B.B. Alston

cover art for Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston ( Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

Amari and the Night Brothers (Supernatural Investigations #1)  by B.B. Alston

Balzer + Bray, 2021

ISBN-13 : 978-0062975164

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Thirteen year old Amari Peters has some big footsteps to fill: her older brother Quinton was the highest performing student at ritzy Jefferson Academy. Since his disappearance (or possibly death) six months ago, Amari’s grades, and behavior, are slipping, and on the last day of school, she shoves a mean girl who makes a dig about her brother and loses her scholarship, her best opportunity to get out of the Rosewood Projects and go to college. Grounded indefinitely, Amari hasn’t been home long when the doorbell rings and she’s asked to sign for a package that, oddly, has been delivered to Quinton’s closet. Opening the package, Amari discovers she has been nominated by her missing brother for a scholarship to the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs training camp. The Bureau of Supernatural Affairs keeps supernatural creatures secret while also protecting innocent humans. Quinton and his partner, “special agents” for the Bureau, have gone missing from the Bureau as well, and Amari decides to attend the camp in hopes of discovering what happened to her brother.

Early on, Amari is discovered to have tremendous magical potential, but this turns out to be a major problem when her supernatural power is discovered to be magic, as magicians are universally considered bad and magic is illegal. Among a throng of privileged “legacy” trainees, Amari’s race, socioeconomic status, and illegal magic make her a pariah among the other trainees, and more determined than ever to qualify to become a Junior Agent and find the answers that will lead to her brother.

While individual elements of the story may sound familiar (a mysterious letter, a summer camp for teenage legacies, mythical and supernatural creatures hidden in plain view, and evil magicians all show up in either Harry Potter or Percy Jackson) B.B. Alston has mixed them up to create something very different. A big piece of that is that Amari, a smart and determined Black girl who already has to prove herself in the outside world, is the point of view character, so we get to see a resourceful character working hard who keeps going even when she’s discouraged by hostility and racism. Nobody hands her a destiny or quest to fulfil, does her homework for her, or makes decisions for her, although she occasionally gets a boost of encouragment from a friend. Alston is also incredibly creative in his world-building (talking elevators with individual personalites, delightful and spooky departmental names and descriptions, gorgeously described magical illusions, magic that can manipulate technology, gossip rags that give you juicy tidbits only when you ask the right questions, and so much more).

Although there are some terrifying creatures and spells, the scariest parts of the book really involve the people who interact with Amari: spoiled mean girl Lara van Helsing, who spreads nasty rumors; evil magician Raoul Moreau, one of the “Night Brothers”; racist kids who draw malicious graffiti on the walls of Amari’s bedroom; Bureau directors certain Amari is a danger to the supernatural world. Amari and the Night Brothers is more of a dark urban fantasy and coming-of-age story than it is a horror story, but it is a great #OwnVoices title that provides a fresh point of view in a genre that seems to be telling the same story over again and again. I’m looking forward to book #2. Highly recommended for grades 4-8

Posted on January 20, 2021 by , Reply
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