I'll Make a Spectacle of You
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
This heart-pounding Southern gothic horror debut from Beatrice Winifred Iker, takes readers to Bricksbury University, the oldest and most storied HBCU in the nation. But as one student is about to find out, a long history comes with a legacy of secrets.
Zora Robinson is an ambitious grad student in her dream program, Appalachian Studies, at Bricksbury University. When her thesis advisor hands her a strange diary and suggests she research the local folklore about a beast roaming the woods surrounding campus, Zora finds a community uneager to talk to an outsider.
As she delves into the history of the beast, she uncovers a rumored secret society called the Keepers that has tenuous ties to the beast…and Bricksbury itself. Zora soon finds herself plagued by visions of the past, and her grip on reality starts to slip as she struggles to uncover what is real and what is folklore. But when a student goes missing, Zora starts to wonder if the Keepers ever really disbanded.
There’s something in the woods and it has its eyes on Zora.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Iker puts a fresh spin on dark academia in their exciting if uneven debut. Zora Robinson arrives at Bricksbury—the oldest HBCU in America—with a few goals: finish her thesis on Black spiritual history, get her graduate degree in Appalachian Studies, and put her poor relationships with her sister and family out of her mind. This last aim is complicated by the fact that her sister, Jasmine, teaches on campus, but things initially go well: her thesis adviser encourages her to go deeper, she quickly integrates herself in the conjure community on campus, and finding friends comes easy. But through her research, she discovers tales of a beast in the woods outside Bricksbury—and then a student goes missing from campus. As her own conjuring power grows, Zora realizes that what's going on is more than mere folklore, and Bricksbury's secrets may have placed all its students in terrible danger. Iker's setting feels intricate and lived-in, with intermittent chapters about Bricksbury's founder illuminating the school's history. Unfortunately, the dialogue can be stilted, secondary characters are underdeveloped, and long expositional passages about Zora's personal history break up an otherwise well-paced plot. Still, there's enough that's original in this creeping gothic to please horror and mystery fans alike. Correction: A previous version of this review used the wrong pronoun to refer to the author.
