Fiendish
by Brenna Yovanoff
High School    Razorbill/Penguin    341 pp.
6/14    978-1-59514-638-0    $17.99    g

Yovanoff (The Space Between, rev. 1/12; Paper Valentine, rev. 3/13) here weaves a haunting tale of old magic in a changing world. When Clementine was a child, a torch-bearing mob burned out her family; Clementine escaped by virtue of a magical coma that left her hidden, semi-conscious, in her cellar for years. When she’s found and awakened, the eerie happenings (grotesquely mutated animals, animated plants, uncanny weather) that led to the mob attack in the first place begin to resurge. As Clementine reacquaints herself with the townsfolk and her remaining “crafty” relatives, she tries to sift through the mysteries of her childhood to figure out what is causing the wild magic. Meanwhile, Clementine’s romantic attachment to Fisher, the boy who woke her, shines a spotlight on the divide between the crafty and non-crafty elements of the town, in whose gray spaces Fisher uneasily exists. Yovanoff’s world-building is sophisticated and precise, incorporating both the physical presence of the town and its dangers and the conceptual underpinnings of the supernatural in Clementine’s universe. Powerful, evocative prose brings to life a world close to overflowing with wild magic, seething prejudice, and base fear. For readers who like their fantasies unsettling and morally tangled; hand this to fans of Laini Taylor and Frances Hardinge.

From the May/June 2014 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.