They Call Her Regret
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Feb 17, 2026
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
In this young adult speculative mystery, a teen must find a way to free a cursed witch in order to save her best friend before time runs out.
Every year horror-loving Simone Washington throws an epic Halloween party for her classmates. Party-planning is her favorite escape from the dark secrets in her past, and this year, she’s taking things up a notch with an invitation-only event to celebrate her eighteenth birthday—something that will leave the halls of Pinegrove Academy flooded with gossip about the big ghoulish bash. The overnight stay at Doll’s Head Lake will be filled with spooky pranks and scary stories told by the fire—including the legend of a local witch named Regret.
But those dark secrets from Simone’s past are forced to the surface at the party when her best friend Kira dies under questionable circumstances. The witch appears and offers Simone a deal: if Simone can figure out how to release Regret from the curse trapping her at the lake within fourteen days, all of Simone’s regrets will be erased. If Simone accepts, Kira’s life will be immediately restored. But if she fails, Kira will die again—and Simone will be the one to kill her.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Desamours (Needy Little Things) delivers another speculative Georgia-set mystery in her propulsive sophomore novel. Since Halloween-obsessed Simone Washington loves "to be in control of the horror," the teen selects purportedly haunted Doll's Head Lake as the location of her 18th birthday party. The gathering is on track to be Simone's best event ever. She even believes she's found a way to persuade her best friend Kira to dump her cheating boyfriend Rich—until Simone accidentally pushes Kira, who can't swim, into the lake. Kira's drowning summons a witch called Regret, who offers Simone a dubious deal: if Simone frees Regret from the mysterious curse trapping her at the lake within 14 days, she'll restore Kira's life in exchange for Rich's. As Simone investigates Regret's past and the curse, she's forced to simultaneously confront her own strained relationships with her mother and a former friend as well as Fairville, Ga.'s dark secrets surrounding a missing college student and a hit-and-run victim. Smartly paralleling high-stakes horror with Simone's twisty personal struggle to reconcile elements of darkness both within herself and her town results in a volume that thrills and chills while probing layers of guilt that build to an unexpected resolution. Main characters read as Black. Ages 13–up.
