All the Dead Lie Down
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3.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The Haunting of Bly Manor meets House of Salt and Sorrows in award-winning author Kyrie McCauley’s contemporary YA gothic romance about a dark family lineage, the ghosts of grief, and the lines we’ll cross for love.
The Sleeping House was very much awake . . .
Days after a tragedy leaves Marin Blythe alone in the world, she receives a surprising invitation from Alice Lovelace—an acclaimed horror writer and childhood friend of Marin’s mother. Alice offers her a nanny position at Lovelace House, the family’s coastal Maine estate.
Marin accepts and soon finds herself minding Alice’s peculiar girls. Thea buries her dolls one by one, hosting a series of funerals, while Wren does everything in her power to drive Marin away. Then Alice’s eldest daughter returns home unexpectedly. Evie Hallowell is every bit as strange as her younger sisters, and yet Marin is quickly drawn in by Evie’s compelling behavior and ethereal grace.
But as Marin settles in, she can’t escape the anxiety that follows her like a shadow. Dead birds appear in Marin’s room. The children’s pranks escalate. Something dangerous lurks in the woods, leaving mutilated animals in its wake. All is not well at Lovelace House, and Marin must unravel its secrets before they consume her.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A grieving teen contends with increasingly horrific happenings in this gothic queer romance by McCauley (We Can Be Heroes). Following her mother's death in a train accident, 17-year-old Marin Blythe moves in with a family friend: renowned, reclusive horror writer Alice Lovelace. Acting as nanny for Alice's youngest daughters, Thea and Wren, Marin deems her new charges as "half-feral" with cruel senses of humor. Their escalating pranks, including an attempt to persuade Marin into eating poisonous nightshade, leave her with no mental space to process her grief. On top of that, Lovelace House—which is surrounded by eerie woods—is purportedly cursed. The only bright spot is the girls' older sister Evie, 17 and newly returned from school. While the teens' blossoming romance helps Marin temporarily forget the house's supposed blight, the sudden appearance of eviscerated animal corpses on the edge of the woods sows new fears. McCauley skillfully wrangles haunting atmosphere, anticipatory tension, and macabre humor to cultivate a slow-boiling thriller couched in a decades-old mystery. The sweet connection between Marin and Evie is solid and affirming, providing levying contrast to occasional moments of gruesome imagery and outright horror. Major characters cue as white. Ages 14–up.
