A Dark and Starless Forest
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In this "stunning and atmospheric"* contemporary fantasy and 2022 Locus Award Top Ten Finalist, when her siblings start to go missing, a girl must confront the dark thing that lives in the forest—and the growing darkness in herself. (*Buzzfeed)
Derry and her eight siblings live in an isolated house by the lake, separated from the rest of the world by an eerie and menacing forest. Frank, the man who raised them after their families abandoned them, says it’s for their own good. After all, the world isn’t safe for people with magic. And Derry feels safe—most of the time.
Until the night her eldest sister disappears. Jane and Derry swore to each other that they’d never go into the forest, not after their last trip ended in blood, but Derry is sure she saw Jane walk into the trees. When another sibling goes missing and Frank’s true colors start to show, feeling safe is no longer an option. Derry will risk anything to protect the family she has left. Even if that means returning to the forest that has started calling to Derry in her missing siblings’ voices.
As Derry spends more time amidst the trees, her magic grows more powerful . . . and so does the darkness inside her, the viciousness she wants to pretend doesn’t exist. But saving her siblings from the forest and from Frank might mean embracing the darkness. And that just might be the most dangerous thing of all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Flower magic and eerie disappearances mask the characters' struggles with sadistic child abuse and secrets in Hollowell's unevenly paced horror debut. Alchemist Derry, 16, and her eight foster siblings were all abandoned to controlling guardian Frank because of the magic each can do. But their austere life of constant surveillance, training, and overprotection in Frank's Indiana lake house fragments after Derry, who is fat and white, and Jane, who is neurodiverse and Black, witness something unspeakable in the forbidden, shadow-haunted forest—and Jane vanishes. Haunted by Jane's pleading voice, Derry forms a tenuous alliance with a shadowy girl in the woods who teaches her to unleash her power. But when more of her siblings disappear, Derry must help liberate them all from a terrible fate. Despite an intersectionally inclusive cast and solid prose, the plot bogs down in overexplained conflict and brutal, abrupt escalations into torture, gaslighting, and violence. Seasoned revenge horror readers, however, may enjoy this macabre showdown. Ages 12–up.
