Katherine Tegen Books, 320 pp.
Published October 2, 2018
DISCLAIMER: I received a free physical ARC of this title from the publisher for review purposes. This did not inform or influence my opinion in any way.
Beware of the woods and the dark, dank deep.
He’ll follow you home, and he won’t let you sleep.
Who are the Sawkill Girls?
Marion: the new girl. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Weighed down by tragedy and hungry for love she’s sure she’ll never find.
Zoey: the pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Maybe she’s broken—or maybe everyone else is.
Val: the queen bee. Gorgeous and privileged, ruthless and regal. Words like silk and eyes like knives, a heart made of secrets and a mouth full of lies.
Their stories come together on the island of Sawkill Rock, where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires.
Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight… until now.
You'll LOVE it if...you crave horror that passes the Bechdel test.
The relationships between Marion, Zoey, and Val are all breathtaking in their complexity, nuance, and relatability. As the girls grapple with the horrifying occurrences on Sawkill Rock and the emerging powers those tragedies evoke, alliances are constantly shifting in ways that feel natural, rather than contrived. Each girl serves a purpose in the slow-forming trio, yet none of them ever come across as stereotypical or predictable. Readers will find something to love (and occasionally pity) in each of these characters; rather than feeling like "chosen ones" set apart from the crowd, Marion, Zoey, and Val develop as normal young women caught in extraordinary circumstances, driven to stand tall when no one else can or will.
Romance and sisterhood both blossom in the group, emphasizing the importance of female friendships at any age, while also providing strong, positive queer and asexual representation. Some moments of girl power and social awareness are a touch on the nose, but this is still a huge step in the right direction for girls in search of heroines who look, act, and feel like they do.
You'll LIKE it if...you prefer your villains have an otherworldly twist.
The nameless creature that preys upon the girls of Sawkill Rock delivers on terror in spades. Its predatory zeal would frighten even if it was one of a kind; as the three girls slowly band together and pool their knowledge of the Rock's tragic history though, the mythology behind the creature reveals even greater horrors. Legrand handles the more explicit details of its habits and appetites with a distance appropriate to a YA novel, yet what she omits only serves to compound a growing sense of dread. Tangential to the creature's appetites are the horrible actions other women carry out in the spirit of self-preservation. This monster exposes the malignant rot that makes true evil so difficult to eradicate, as well as reminding readers that while morality can sometimes be cast into black and white, moral decisions often exist in the grey in-between.
You MAY NOT LIKE it if...supernatural horror isn't the genre for you.
Sawkill Girls places itself somewhere in the middle ground between science fiction and fantasy with regards to its supernatural elements. While this never feels awkward or incomplete—on the contrary, it feels wholly original and exhilarating!—it does emphatically put the story in the realm of "genre reads". Fans of Stephen King and Joe Hill will delight in how the strange and fantastical serve as catalysts for the growth of the main characters, but readers who prefer their thrills solidly rooted in our reality might struggle with the dark whimsy at play.
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