Killer House Party (YA chiller)

     "In the kitchen, glass shattered. Then, there was a sound like wet laundry hitting the ground.  A pale white hand flopped over the threshold. It laid perfectly, eerily still.  

     The Drama Club was dead. Again. Or they weren't. They could get up, find another bottle, and start the cycle all over.  Or they could stay dead, surrounded by broken bottles and a nightmarish mix of crawling spiders."

    I imagine at this time of year there's a lot on high school graduations going on. Which means a whole lot of graduation parties going on--both the officially sanctioned ones and shall we say more covert ones. The gathering that is the setting for Lily Anderson's Killer House Party definitely is of the latter variety. 

     Arden, Anderson's narrator is furious with good reason. All through high school she's been the perfect student--sacrificing any vestiges of a social life and studying diligently with dreams of college and med school dancing through her head. So when her parents tell her that they have spent all her college fund on a house but it's no big deal because one semester of community college will net her the realtors license she will need to follow in their footsteps...

     ...she is not a happy camper. Determined to follow her own script, she looks for a way to earn the money she needs to attend the four year college she's been accepted at. How about holding a clandestine graduation party at the house Mommy and Daddy Dearest spent her college money on? The school's official lock in party is much too tame for many graduates' tastes. Why not provide a pay to enter alternative?...

     ...Even under the best of circumstances this would be such a not good idea. Think lack of supervision. Think illegal substances. Think property damage, injuries, legal liability...

     ...But these are far from the best of circumstances. The house has been abandoned for a century which bodes for all kinds of property damage. And then there's the reason it stayed vacant. Nobody knows exactly what happened to the family who lived there. But all kinds of sinister and gruesome theories are floating around. 

     The night of the party the venue transforms itself into a hideous hellscape from which the teens cannot escape. Only one thing is for sure...

    ...not all the guests will get out alive.

On a purrrsonal note, I know with me raving about the Orono Public Library Summer Reading Challenge some of you may feel let down that your library doesn't have one. My Amber, whose second horror novel, Hallowed Deadly Seeds, is dropping soon, has a great solution: create your own. It doesn't have to be fancy schmancy. She's planned a family one because her siblings live a distance away in South Maine. Each person sets their own reading goal. We buy or make prizes for each other. At the end there's a pizza party. Sounds like fun to me.

Amber has another great suggestion for summer fun. If you want to know what it is I guess you'll have to keep reading this blog. 

Jules Hathaway 

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More healthy Orono 💐

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Flowers in back of Orono Public Library

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Thrift shop haul

Check out the sneakers. The flowered 💐 ones are Vans! Aren't the Squishmallows darling? Just $1 each. A woman thought I shouldn't get a kid's dress. It fits. Most women's dresses don't. 

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Books

When I told them about the little free library that will be installed in the trailer coop they invited me to take some books. Our very first donation. I'm sure the kids will love these.

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Books

When Eugene and I went to Governors for breakfast this morning we saw this couple in the lobby. They go around to places giving kids free books to promote literacy. I'm gonna send a shout out to them for doing such important work and to Governors for being the kind of family friendly and community centered restaurant that would host them.

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Shards of Silence (YA fiction)

     I tend to get the books I review through Inter Library Loan. On line newsletters and other publications keep me supplied with more titles than I could ever read. But when I drop in on my home library, Orono Public, I find real gems. Brian Lee Young's Shards of Silence is one of them. 

     Derrick, Young's protagonist, is about to make an enormous life transition. He's starting his sophomore year far from home at an elite historically white (and wealthy) boarding school. It's quite a challenge. Between the intense academic workload, his sports commitments, and the rest of life he's struggling to do well enough to maintain his full ride scholarship. And a lot of his seriously privileged classmates ask him all these ignorant questions. Does he live in a teepee? Why doesn't he have long hair?

     Derrick's heart is torn between school and home. He's very worried about his beloved great grandmother's health. She's undergoing testing for quite alarming symptoms and forgetting to take her medicine. If he had stayed at the local high school, although he wouldn't have the many opportunities Sagefield Academy offers, he would be able to help and protect her. When he sees her he wonders if it's the last time. 

     His great grandmother fears for his safety when he's away at school. He understands that it's because of the terrible years she was forced to spend at a government boarding school with a kill the Indian to save the man (or woman) mandate. He knows she is still suffering from this experience. But whenever he tries to bring up the subject she tells him to drop it. 

     Perhaps if he writes his big history research paper on the experiences of Indigenous children in those schools he will find a way to help her bring her experiences into the light and break their hold on her.

     Young based Shards of Silence on his last three years of high school at an elite boarding school. Like Derrick, he experienced culture shock in his new environment and had a lot of stereotype breaking to do. 

     When his grandmother came from the reservation to see him she saw the bruises he acquired playing football she asked if the teachers were hitting him. She had suffered through the government boarding schools. As an adult he started the manuscript when her health was failing and he didn't know how long she had left. It became his "goodbye love letter to her. 

     Shards of Silence is such a good read for its target demographic and well beyond. It's highly engaging with a beautifully nuanced and complex plot and relatable protagonist. It covers one of those inconvenient chapters in America's history that the MAGA crowd would dearly love to erase. 

     But in my mind the best thing it does is it tackles something I don't think any of us have an easy time with no matter how old we are when it happens--the impending death of a loved one. Young perfectly captures the intensity and bittersweet nature of the knowing. Many teens who have not lost a friend or relative have experienced the death of a beloved animal companion.

On a purrrsonal note, mostly I learned about deaths after the fact. But in 2019 I walked that path with Joseph Jacob Hathaway, my beloved feline companion of 16 years. We were especially close because of a birth defect that required special care on my part and close partnership with his vet. But unless he was acutely sick no cat loved his family, his life, and his home as robustly as he did. And he was an affectionate and loving lap cat. I had almost finished my first year of grad school. I'd just returned from an international conference when I noticed troubling symptoms. It turned out to be lung cancer. With medicine to restore his appetite I could give him a last good summer. He left the world hearing my voice, feeling my touch. I was hesitant to adopt another cat because I was afraid I couldn't love him/her enough. But a little girl cat insisted on claiming me for her own and thawed my heart. Years later I was able to cope with my stroke by channeling the courage and determination I saw in precious Joey.

A great big shout out to Young for creating this beautiful literary labor of love and Joey and Tobago for being their catly selves.

Jules Hathaway 

     

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