Description de l’éditeur
**One of BuzzFeed's Great LGBTQ+ YA novels to Warm up Your Winter * A Kid's Feb/March IndieNext pick**
From New York Times bestselling author Claire Legrand comes a new, bone-chilling YA horror novel about a girl who joins a coven to root out a vicious evil that’s stalking her village. Perfect for fans of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Grace Year.
Her name is unimportant.
All you must know is that today she will become one of the four saints of Haven. The elders will mark her and place the red hood on her head. With her sisters, she will stand against the evil power that lives beneath the black mountain—an evil which has already killed nine of her village’s men.
She will tell no one of the white-eyed beasts that follow her. Or the faceless gray women tall as houses. Or the girls she saw kissing in the elm grove.
Today she will be a saint of Haven. She will rid her family of her mother’s shame at last and save her people from destruction. She is not afraid. Are you?
This searing and lyrically written novel by the critically acclaimed author of Sawkill Girls beckons readers to follow its fierce heroine into a world filled with secrets and blood—where the truth is buried in lies and a devastating power waits, seething, for someone brave enough to use it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Handmaid's Tale meets The Craft in this feminist standalone from Legrand (the Empirium trilogy), a fusion of horror and queer romantic fantasy that advocates unity, self-empowerment, and societal change. The village of Haven believes that generations ago, wicked women destroyed the world with their ambition, deceit, insolence, and lust. Only the most pious humans survived, banding together to form an all-white patriarchal settlement. Residents routinely gather to exhaust their rage and depravity by visiting it upon four teenage female "saints"—Mercy, Silence, Temperance, and newly anointed Amity. Amity hopes that her service will absolve her family of her adulterous exiled mother's sins, and persuade God to halt the gruesome supernatural murders claiming the town's men. When the killings continue, however, Amity realizes that more drastic measures are needed to save her neighbors. Upon discovering the existence of witches able to manipulate magical energy called extasia, Amity vows to learn their ways so she may summon the Devil—and banish him. Though the overstuffed plot retreads familiar tropes, readers will be riveted by Legrand's fierce female characters and their harrowing emotional journey. Ages 14–up.
