By Tiffany D. Jackson
Katherine Tegen Books, 2022. 406 pages. Young Adult Fiction
When Springville residents -- at least, the ones still alive -- are questioned about what happened on prom night, they all have the same explanation...Maddy did it. An outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. She's dealt with it because she has more pressing problems to manage. Until the morning a surprise rainstorm reveals her most closely kept secret: Maddy is biracial. She has been passing for white her entire life at the behest of her fanatical white father. After a viral bullying video pulls back the curtain on Springville High's racist roots, student leaders come up with a plan to change their image: host the school's first integrated prom as a show of unity. The popular white class president convinces her Black superstar quarterback boyfriend to ask Maddy to be his date, leaving Maddy wondering if it's possible to have a normal life. But some of her classmates aren't done with her just yet. And what they don't now is that Maddy still has another secret...one that will cost them all their lives.
Wow. This book kept me turning pages far past my bedtime. Tiffany D. Jackson is able to ramp up horror, with a nod to Stephen King's Carrie, and also tackle America's history and legacy of racism at the same time. The anti-Blackness in the small, Georgia town is almost one of the characters in the book itself; the weight of it is palpable on each page. The reader aches for Maddy from the very start of the story, as the severity of the bullying and racism unfolds. This book could stand alone as a horror novel, but taken together with its deep dive into the genuine horror of internalized and externalized anti-Blackness, it is absolutely un-put-down-able.
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By Ryan Douglass
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By Kalynn Bayron
Bloomsbury, 2023. 230 pages. Young Adult Fiction
Charity Curtis has the summer job of her dreams, playing the "final girl" at Camp Mirror Lake. Guests pay to be scared in this full-contact terror game, as Charity and her summer crew recreate scenes from a classic slasher film, Curse of Camp Mirror Lake. The more realistic the fear, the better for business. But the last weekend of the season, Charity's co-workers begin disappearing. And when one ends up dead, Charity's role as the final girl suddenly becomes all too real. If Charity and her girlfriend Bezi hope to survive the night, they'll need to figure out what this killer is after. Is there more to the story of Mirror Lake and its danger past than Charity ever suspected?
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