Honeysuckle and Bone

A ghost haunts a grieving 18-year-old in Tobias’s lush and alluring debut. Life in New York is miserable for Carina Marshall now that her best friend, Joy, is dead and her peers all hate her. To escape, Carina tells her parents she’s driving cross-country but instead flies to Jamaica—a trip her Jamaican-born mother has forbidden, citing danger and expense. Joy was supposed to spend the summer nannying for the Halls, a prominent Jamaican family she’d never met, so Carina lies to the family and takes Joy’s place. The Halls’ estate, Blackbead House, is gorgeous; there, Carina immediately befriends some teenage employees, but she’s also beset by violent visions, a cloying scent, and spectral messages demanding her departure. After hearing stories about a spirit tied to Blackbead, Carina starts digging, desperate to prove her tormenter isn’t Joy seeking vengeance from beyond. Though Carina’s supernatural encounters lack cogency and coherence, which undermines the tale’s success as a ghost story, her first-person-present narration fosters tension while immersing readers in the sights, sounds, and culture of Jamaica. All of Tobias’s fully fleshed characters have brown skin, and most speak with a “melodic lilt of patois.” Ages 14–up. Agent: Chelsea Eberly, Greenhouse Literary. (Jan.)