The Deadly Daylight
by Ash Harrier
Intermediate, Middle School    Holiday    272 pp.
3/24    9780823455621    $18.99
e-book ed.  9780823457618    $11.99

Twelve-year-old Alice enjoys helping her father prepare bodies for viewings at the Tranquility Funeral Home, and she intends to take over the business when she’s grown, even if the kids at school call her “Alice in Zombieland.” Alice makes a new friend, Violet, whose allergy to sunlight prompts the kids to call her “Violet the Vampire”; when Violet’s uncle George dies of the same allergy, Alice’s ability to read “resonances” from the belongings of the dead tells her that George’s death wasn’t an accident. Alice begins to investigate, and her polite but dogged sleuthing begins to uncover answers. Does the death have to do with the older teens partying under the dock where George died—among them Cal, whose willingness to stand up for Alice and Violet against the bullies makes him a kind of ally? Alice’s neuroatypical presentation (her blunted affect, sensitivity to overstimulation, and precise thought processes will find a sympathetic audience from readers on the autism spectrum) at one point causes a rift in her nascent friendship with Violet, leading to a reassessment and reconciliation that will ring true with many readers. The characters and community of Damocles Cove are brightly painted in this solid middle-grade mystery with lightly handled supernatural aspects, a potential headliner to a welcome new series.

From the May/June 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.