House of Ash and Bone


House of Ash and Bone by Joel A. Sutherland
Publisher: Tundra Books
Special thanks to Penguin Books for sending a copy for review.

Summary:
Seventeen-year-old Josephine Jagger is a talented writer with special abilities she doesn’t fully understand. Over the years she has developed methods to cope with the voices she hears in her head, but the old house her family has inherited in Vermont makes Josephine question what’s real and what’s not more than anything she’s ever encountered before. It’s filled with shadows, and whispers, and the unshakable feeling of being watched. Josephine then catches her first glimpse of a shadowy woman with long hair, pale skin, an impossibly wide smile and hollow pits for eyes. Her name is Dorcas, the ghost of a witch who died three hundred years ago. She has summoned the family to Vermont to ensnare them — then consume them — in order to rise from the grave and live again… (Goodreads).
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The Grimmer


The Grimmerby Naben Ruthnum
Publisher: ECW Press
Special thanks to ECW Press for sending a copy for review.

Summary:
The small-town mysteries of John Bellairs are made modern with a dash of Stranger Things in this spine-tingling supernatural horror-thriller After his father returns from treatment for addiction, highschooler Vish ― lover of metal music and literature ― is uncertain what the future holds. It doesn’t help that everyone seems to know about the family’s troubles, and they stand out doubly as one of the only brown families in town. When Vish is mistaken for a relative of the weird local bookseller and attacked by an unsettling pale man who seems to be decaying, he is pulled into the world of the occult, where witches live in television sets, undead creatures can burn with a touch, and magic is mathematical. Vish must work with the bookstore owner and his mysterious teenage employee, Gisela, to stop an interdimensional invasion that would destroy their peaceful town. Bringing together scares, suspense, and body horror, The Grimmer is award-winning author Naben Ruthnum’s first foray into the young adult genre. This gripping ride through the supernatural is loaded with vivid characters, frightening imagery, and astonishing twists, while tackling complex issues such as grief, racism, and addiction (Goodreads).

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The Dead Kid Detective Agency


The Dead Kid Detective Agencyby Evan Munday
Publisher: ECW Press
Special thanks to ECW Press for sending a copy for review.

Summary:
Thirteen-year-old October Schwartz is new in town, short on friends, and the child of a clinically depressed science teacher. Naturally, she spends most of her time in the Sticksville Cemetery, which just happens to border her backyard. And that backyard just happens to be the home of five dead teenagers, each from a different era of the there’s the dead United Empire Loyalist! The dead escaped slave who made her way north via the Underground Railroad! The dead quintuplet! Soon, October befriends the five dead kids. Together ― using October’s smarts and the dead kids’ abilities to walk through walls and get around undetected and stuff ― they form The Dead Kid Detective Agency, committed to solving Sticksville’s most mysterious mysteries. October’s like Nancy Drew, if she’d hung out with corpses. When Sticksville Central High School’s beloved French teacher dies in a suspicious car accident, it provides the agency with its first bona fide case. Soon October and her five dead friends find themselves in the midst of a nefarious murder plot, thick with car chases, cafeteria fights, sociopathic math teachers, real estate appointments, and a wacky adventure that might uncover the truth about a bomb that exploded almost 40 years ago (Goodreads).

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This Delicious Death


This Delicious Deathby Kayla Cottingham
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Special thanks to Raincoast Books for sending a copy for review.

Summary:
Three years ago, the melting of arctic permafrost released a pathogen of unknown origin into the atmosphere, causing a small percentage of people to undergo a transformation that became known as the Hollowing. Those impacted slowly became intolerant to normal food and were only able to gain sustenance by consuming the flesh of other human beings. Those who went without flesh quickly became feral, turning on their friends and family. However, scientists were able to create a synthetic version of human meat that would satisfy the hunger of those impacted by the Hollowing. As a result, humanity slowly began to return to normal, albeit with lasting fear and distrust for the people they’d pejoratively dubbed ghouls.

Zoey, Celeste, Valeria, and Jasmine are all ghouls living in Southern California. As a last hurrah before their graduation they decided to attend a musical festival in the desert. They have a cooler filled with hard seltzers and SynFlesh and are ready to party.

But on the first night of the festival Val goes feral, and ends up killing and eating a boy. As other festival guests start disappearing around them the girls soon discover someone is drugging ghouls and making them feral. And if they can’t figure out how to stop it, and soon, no one at the festival is safe (Goodreads).

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