Sawkill Girls

An idyllic island hides a deadly secret in this atmospheric, Gothic-flavored chiller, which mingles elements of dark fairy tales and outright horror. Sawkill Rock is home to lush forests, rocky cliffs, marvelous horses, and the Mortimer women, who have lived there for generations. Marion Althouse, 16, recently lost her father and has just arrived on the island with her older sister, Charlotte, and their mother. Marion soon befriends the police chief’s daughter, Zoey Harlow, and, to Zoey’s chagrin, seems to be getting close to the beautiful schemer Val Mortimer, matriarch Lucy’s daughter. When Charlotte goes missing, Marion discovers that 23 girls have disappeared in the past century and a half, including Zoey’s best friend. It seems that something inhuman lives in Sawkill Rock’s dense woods, immortalized in the grisly urban legend of the Collector, and the young women, each with an extraordinary emerging power, may be able to vanquish it— if they don’t destroy each other first. Sure to win Legrand (Winterspell) plenty of new fans, this tale, which includes an asexual character and a beautifully wrought queer romance, focuses on the power of female friendship and what it means to pit women against one another in fiction and in life. Ages 14–up. [em]Agent: Victoria Marini, Irene Goodman Agency. (Oct.) [/em]