by Sedgwick, Marcus Book list Using three wildly different voices and two time periods separated by more than 200 years, Sedgwick's horror offering is pretty ambitious for its modest page count. The good news: he pulls it off. Sixteen-year-old Rebecca and her policeman father have just moved from London to the seaside town of Winterfold to escape the controversy surrounding his failure to save a girl's life. There Rebecca meets Ferelith, a philosophic goth whose tricky mannerisms keep her status constantly in question is she friend or foe? While the two play increasingly dar. games. Sedgwick cuts back to 1798, when the town priest teamed up with a visionary doctor to try to learn the secrets of the afterlife. These sections, written as the priest's journal in convincing period tongue, are masterful in their ominous vagueness ( But, oh! The blood! The blood! ). The chapters from Ferelith's point of view as well as her character feel far less assured. Still, Sedgwick dovetails the plot splendidly. This book is one thing very few YA novels are: genuinely scary.--Kraus, Danie. Copyright 2010 Booklist From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission. School Library Journal Gr 9 Up-Rebecca's vacation with her father in a small English coastal village takes a dark turn when a strange local girl befriends her. This chilling, compulsive read switches back and forth from the teens' stories to that of an 18th-century rector obsessed with communicating with corpses. (Aug.) (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. Publishers Weekly Sedgwick (Revolver) addresses themes of death and what may (or may not) await in the afterlife in this chilling story, told in three voices and in two parallel stories set 200 years apart. In contemporary England, teenage Rebecca reluctantly moves to the coastal village of Winterfold, trading her life back in Greenwich for a lonely town where she knows no one and that every year loses more of itself to the inexorable pull of the sea. Soon, though, Rebecca is discovered by Ferelith, "the strangest-looking girl she's ever seen," who opens a dangerous new world to Rebecca, as Ferelith draws her into Winterfold's dark secrets and legends. The mystery that is Ferelith-a calculated and intelligent girl who left school at age 14, lives in a commune, and doesn't seem entirely human-will pull readers through the book, as will a twin mystery that unspools through the increasingly frenzied journal entries of a local priest in 1798, himself in the thrall of a mysterious stranger. Showing his customary skill with a gothic setting and morally troubled characters, Sedgwick keeps readers guessing to the very end. Ages 12-up. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved School Library Journal Gr 9 Up-Three lives intersect in this disquieting but skillfully written tale of the human desire to know what awaits us after death. Beautiful and bitter Rebecca has come to the crumbling seaside village of Winterfold with her police-officer father to escape the consequences of a deadly choice he made. She meets Ferelith, a peculiar local girl who prefers "things that are frightening," and who convinces Rebecca to join her in rebellious and perilous activities. Ferelith shares a troubling story of dark doings in the history of Winterfold, which leads to the third part of this tale, which is told through excerpts from the diary of a priest, written in 1798, about a devilish scientific experiment. The three characters around whom the narrative revolves are well realized and realistically flawed, and the story is hugely compelling. The plot moves forward with Sedgwick dangling juicy details in front of readers, revealing just enough information to keep them guessing, never allowing everything to be exposed at once. As all the puzzle pieces fall into place, the peril for the girls rises to a terrifying crescendo, and teens will have no choice but to continue until the last page is turned.-Heather M. Campbell, formerly at Philip S. Miller Library, Castle Rock, CO (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. |
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