Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**4.5-stars**
A girl with incredible strength.
A girl who can vanish.
A girl who burns.
There are always three.
When Marion moves with her older sister and mother to the island of Sawkill Rock, she looks at it as a place for them to recover, to move on. After the death of Marion’s father, her world feels empty, yet she is left to hold the family together, a weighty responsibility.
But once on Sawkill, it doesn’t take Marion long to realize this island isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Something ominous lurks here and it feeds on the blood of young women.
Zoey sees Marion as the opportunity to have a new friend who doesn’t suck. Zoey is also a transplant to the island and with her father being a police officer, she is all too familiar with the little problem of disappearing girls plaguing Sawkill. In fact, she lost her best friend to the monster’s clutches and she has never been satisfied with the community’s response. She befriends Marion and together they begin to work on discovering the secrets of Sawkill. When Marion’s older sister, Charlotte, goes missing as well, things really start to heat up.
Val Mortimer. The Queen Bee. The Regina George of Sawkill Rock. She’s beautiful, she’s popular, she’s rich, she’s possibly evil and she’s got her eyes on Marion.
I went into this book with the mistaken belief that this was YA Contemporary with some Magical Realism elements. WRONG. This book is YA Horror. I was so happy. Dark secrets, urban legends, a monster feeding on the blood of girls, a uncoordinated band of kids coming together to defeat evil, a female / female relationship, humor, mystery, danger – seriously – this book has it all!
The atmosphere of this is dark and full. I was completely drawn into the girl’s lives on the rock. As a person who also lives on a small island, 30-miles out to sea, I can say the ‘island life rep’ was strong.
This would be a great book to pick up in October. I am actually a little sad I didn’t get to it then. My one negative is that I would say it was a little too long. I started getting anxious toward the end and just wanted a conclusion already! I think the same story could have been told, and perhaps better served, if about 50-pages had been shaved off. But that is 100% my opinion and it could be completely wrong. What the heck do I know anyway?
I would recommend this to all my horror-loving friends, or even just friends who like a dark, creepy atmosphere. Definitely worth a read!