A Place for Vanishing
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- ¥1,400
発行者による作品情報
A teen girl and her family return to her mother's childhood home, only to discover that the house's strange beauty may disguise a sinister past, in this contemporary gothic horror from the author of What We Harvest.
A BOOKPAGE AND KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
The house was supposed to be a fresh start. That's what Libby's mom said. And after Libby’s recent bipolar III diagnosis and the tragedy that preceded it, Libby knows she and her family need to find a new normal.
But Libby’s new home turns out to be anything but normal. Scores of bugs haunt its winding halls, towering stained-glass windows feature strange, insectile designs, and the garden teems with impossibly blue roses. And then there are the rumors. The locals, including the mysterious boy next door, tell stories about disappearances tied to the house, stretching back over a century to its first owners. Owners who supposedly hosted legendary masked séances on its grounds.
Libby’s mom refuses to hear anything that could derail their family’s perfect new beginning, but Libby knows better. The house is keeping secrets from her, and something tells her that the key to unlocking them lies in the eerie, bug-shaped masks hidden throughout the property.
We all wear masks—to hide our imperfections, to make us stronger and braver. But if Libby keeps hers on for too long, she might just lose herself—and everyone she loves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hoping for a fresh start after her suicide attempt and recent bipolar III diagnosis, 16-year-old Libby Feldman and her family move into her mother's childhood home, which has been abandoned since the tragic deaths of Libby's maternal grandparents. Established by spiritualist Ellen Clery in 1894 as the House of Masks, Libby's new abode—a crumbling Victorian mansion that boasts a hedge maze of blue roses, disturbing insect-themed stained-glass windows, and a history of mysterious disappearances—is a fixture in local legend. Despite her mother's efforts to enforce normalcy, Libby enlists the help of her 13-year-old sister Vivi and her neighbor, 16-year-old Flynn Driscoll, to investigate the secrets surrounding the property and the masks that Madame Clery left behind. As the trio delves into the dark pasts of the house's former residents, they discover that the sinister truth about the masks is tangled in their own buried traumas. Fraistat wields deeply unsettling prose and evocative insect theming to craft an expertly woven narrative that is both a frightening slow-burn psychological thriller and a nuanced and touching exploration of the complicated aftermath of trauma. Libby and Flynn cue as white; Vivi is half Black and half white. Age 12–up.
