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Book Review: Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Vampire Hunting (Serwa Boateng #1) by Roseanne A. Brown

Cover art for Serwa Boateng's Guide to Vampire Hunting by Roseanne A. Brown

Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Vampire Hunting (Serwa Boatang #1) by Roseanne A. Brown

Rick Riordan Presents, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1368066365

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This is a wild ride of a book. Serwa Boateng is a Ghanaian-American (born in Ghana) 12 year old, the daughter of Slayers of vampires called adze, who look like fireflies and can possess people, and obaifyo, witches who use black magic. She has always been homeschooled, but after a supernatural attack on her home, her parents are sent on a mission she can’t be a part of and she is sent to live with her Aunt Latricia and cousin Roxy in Rocky Gorge, Maryland, a supernatural dead zone, where she will have to attend middle school and deal with microaggressions, hostility, racism, and an adze who has crossed into the dead zone, without help from her parents or the council that directs their missions.

 

When Serwa accidentally starts a food fight in home ec, she and four other students end up with detention, picking up trash in and around the school. While picking trash in the woods, they are attacked by an adze, and when Serwa explains what’s happening, they want to help. Eujun used to be friends with Roxy but when forced to pick between friends picked popular mean girl Ashley. Gavin is Black and a jokester. Mateo is Guatemalan and a model student, who stutters. Roxy’s father has been deported to Ghana. Their teacher, Mrs. Dean, has it out for Serwa, who she calls Sarah Boating, and Serwa thinks she is the adze.

 

The kids are terrible fighters and have no magic. Serwa calls on the earth goddess with a request to bless them with divine wisdom. They are sent to the underworld to retrieve her sword, which never stops fighting. Their mission is successful, and also incredibly funny. The goddess gives the kids divine wisdom and an elemental blessing that will let them draw on the power of their element.

 

The art teacher, Mr. Riley. reveals that the origin of the dead zone is unique because his ancestor, who had divine wisdom, and Roxy’s, who had black magic, combined them to protect enslaved people during a rebellion.

 

Ghanaian mythology is not something I was familiar with, so this was a fresh approach to the “chosen one” storyline. Serwa has a distinct voice and point of view that make her stand out from the current crop. While the story is sometimes predictable, I was wowed by the energy and rage at the end. Never underestimate a teenager in an emotional storm. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Book Review: Women in Horror Month: The Year I Flew Away by Marie Arnold

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The Year I Flew Away  by Marie Arnold

Versify, 2021

ISBN-13 : 978-0358272755

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Ten-year-old Gabrielle has left her home, family, and friends in Haiti to live in America with family she barely knows. Arriving in New York City in the winter, she is being bullied, having a hard time learning and understanding English and fitting in. She knows better than to trust a witch, but determined to be accepted, she accepts three slices of mango from the witch Lady Lydia. Each piece Gabrielle eats will grant a wish, but take something else away.

Gabrielle is a character who squeezes everything she can out of life. At the beginning of the book, she is mischievous and playful, active, curious, imaginative, loving, strong-minded, and brave. Marie Arnold sets her story to be descriptive of all the senses: flavors, textures, colors, and smells.  As much as Gabrielle loves her home, there is still poverty, hunger, and violence, and her parents, unable to get papers for themselves, decide to send her to America on her own, to stay with her uncle’s family. The qualities that serve Gabrielle well in Haiti, though, aren’t appreciated or apparent in New York City.

When she meets the witch, Lady Lydia, Gabrielle is wary, but after turning Lady Lydia away several times, Gabrielle finally decides she wants to belong enough to accept the consequences. Lady Lydia warns Gabrielle that if she eats all three pieces of the mango, she will have to give her essence to Lady Lydia. Gabrielle wishes for perfect English, and gains friends (Carmen and a talking rat named Rocky) but she also loses understanding of her home language, Haitian Creole, meaning she can no longer speak to or understand her family. What will the next wish take away? Gabrielle, along with help from her friends, must save herself and her family from Lady Lydia and figure out how to balance fitting in as an American with pride in her Haitian identity.

Arnold does a really wonderful job depicting the varying characters in the book, and addresses skillfully tough issues like racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. She presents a rounded picture of Gabrielle’s aunt and uncle, Carmen’s large family, and even the girl who bullies her. The tricky Lady Lydia is dramatically and vividly depicted, as is her nearly completed and disturbing spell. This is an entertaining, thoughtful, witchy, #OwnVoices book for middle grade students, and although the protagonist is a little young, could also be enjoyed by middle schoolers. Highly recommended for ages 8–12.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Book Review: Lakewood: A Novel by Megan Giddings

cover art for Lakewood by Megan Giddings

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Lakewood  by Megan Giddings

Amistad, 2020

ISBN-13 : 978-0062913197

Available: Hardcover, audiobook, Kindle edition

 

After her grandmother dies, college student Lena discovers her disabled, neurologically impaired mother is unable to pay her bills or afford the medication she needs to manage her disability. So when she is recruited for a research study on memory for a substantial sum of money she pushes her reservations to the side, signs an NDA and paperwork stating her agreement to any procedure the study may require, drops out of school, and tells her mother and friends she has a new, well-paid job in the small town of Lakewood as an employee at a warehouse. Bizarre psychological testing, vaccines, pills, induced isolation, and hallucinations become normalized as different test subjects come and go. Realizing that something must be very wrong, Lena attempts to question observers and participants in the study and to find information online, but is blocked at every turn, until finally she discovers that unethical government experimentation on Black people has historical precedent. Despite her unsettling findings, Lena continues to participate in the study so her mother can keep her health insurance and pay the bills.

Obviously inspired by the Tuskegee experiment and other research studies that exploited Black people in the United States, as well as the Flint water crisis, Lakewood carries that legacy forward into the present, through generations of trauma. Ir is timely in its exploration of scientific racism, the drastic actions family members will take to help ill and disabled family members afford healthcare, and government gaslighting and neglect of the study participants and their own health.

Told from Lena’s point of view, this history metamorphoses into a personalized, hallucinatory, and terrifying situation that will appall, disturb, and shock the reader as the layers peel away. Highly recommended.

 

Contains: body horror, mutilation, murder, gore, violence, medical experimentation