This gripping, layered novel centers queer and racially diverse characters.

As Val’s appetites increase and other Hollows are drugged, the friends must uncover the one responsible and bring them to justice before society turns on all Hollow people. After a blood-induced frenzy, they have both a dead body to dispose of and a mystery to solve, as they discover that a strange powder added to Val’s drink may have induced her attack. The other girls find her consuming Kaiden, Eli’s band mate. At his invitation, they attend a party at the festival, in the middle of which Val runs away. Val becomes enamored with Eli despite the lead singer’s anti-Hollow stance. On their way, they meet No Flash Photography, one of the bands. Zoey, Celeste, Jasmine, and Valeria, who all suffer from Hollowness, are headed to the Desert Bloom music festival in the Mojave Desert. Fortunately, lab-grown SynFlesh allows them to lead mostly normal lives. Those affected by the Hollowing developed the need and desire to consume human flesh. Two years ago, humanity was forever changed when melting permafrost unleashed a strange pathogen. This is nightmare on the prairie, and on the mountain, and in the woods, and pretty much everywhere in between the only real question is which devil will get them: the one within Amanda or the ones circling the cabin? The fast pace and period dialogue mesh reasonably well.īest read late at night in a tent with a trusted friend nearby….Ĭalifornia victims of a climate change–induced pandemic uncover a deadly plot. There’s pestilence in the form of ants, feverish plague, and evil of, well, biblical proportion Job has nothing on this family. Amanda laments, “I’m starting to believe that Hell is everywhere,” and readers won’t disagree. Relocation by ox-drawn wagon begins when Pa decides to follow rumors of a better life available out on the prairie, and soon, true to the genre, they move into a cabin thick with old blood and gore. Set in the unspecified past, the tale is reminiscent of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s, even including parents called Ma and Pa. Against all teachings of her religious family-and after suffering a devastating breakdown the previous winter-she is now “with child” and trying to hide her secret in the family’s crowded mountain cabin. Teen Amanda has been playing out in the woods, and she hasn’t been playing alone. An old-fashioned ghost story plays on primal fears: parents turning on children, the dread of what is out there, and the horror of what might be within.

Daughters unto devils by amy lukavics