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Book Review: The Memory Eater by Rebecca Mahoney

Cover art for The Memory Eater by Rebecca Mahoney

The Memory Eater by Rebecca Mahoney

Razorbill, 2023

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593524602

Available: Hardcover Bookshop.org )

 

Whistler Beach in Maine is a magical place, but frightening for those who know the truth. When was the last time Maine wasn’t like this? Stephen King didn’t invent the spookiness and weirdness of the state– it’s been there forever. Rebecca Mahoney has unchained the dark charms of the coastal region and churned out a beautiful storm of a YA novel that is tough to categorize. At different points, it could be considered horror, fantasy, thriller, or family drama. All fit, and that’s the charm of The Memory Eater

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Seventeen-year-old Alana Harlow has an interesting job. While she should be planning for college and enjoying the hell that is high school, she’s inherited the Harlow business. Every day, she treks down to the cave on the beach and helps people lose chosen memories– and makes sure they emerge alive.

 

Inside that cave resides a unique monster. The Memory Eater was brought into the country two hundred years ago by the Harlow family. Instead of killing the massive beast, they imprisoned her with a dark magic deep within the cavern. What does the creature look like? Two stories tall, or long, depending on the situation, and clever. Her flesh is covered in the faces of the memories she devours, and her own memories might not be her own. She speaks in riddles, hungry, aching to be filled with the lives of others. Mahoney has created a masterpiece of a beast here.

 

Alana guides guests into the cave to have unpleasant memories taken from them, while protecting the rest. The business keeps Whistler Beach bustling. The family business is a tricky, twisted history. Her own life is a mess, too, navigating romance and friendship while figuring out how to handle the weight of the job.

 

Then one day, the Memory Eater escapes, along with a bunch of secrets. The holes in Alana’s memory become crucial bits of the puzzle to survival and her family history.

 

The writing is lean and deceptively simple. Mahoney nails teen relationships and small town life. There’s a lot to digest in these pages, yet she has penned a novel that flows easy, allowing the horrors and relationships to build in waves.

 

Recommended.

 

Reviewed by David Simms

 

Book Review: The Raven by Dani Lamia with Gwendolyn Kress

 

Cover art for The Raven by Dani Lamia with Gwendolyn Kress

The Raven by Dani Lamia

Level 4 Press, Inc.

ISBN-13: 978-1933769707

Available: Preorder paperback, Kindle edition, MP3 Bookshop.orgAmazon.com )

 

I received a .pdf ARC of this from the publisher.

 

Rebekah is bullied horrendously at school, mostly cruel jokes originating with popular Coralie Renner and her friends. Things get much worse when Beka accidentally spills a drink on her skirt at a party and Coralie nicknames her “piss bitch.” Not only does she face name calling and humiliation but someone pees in her locker, destroying her textbooks, clothes, and sketchbook.

 

As a young child Beka had a dream friend, the Raven, who eventually stopped visiting but left her with a special edition of the works of Poe. She starts dreaming of him and carrying the book again. This time her dreams are vengeful. The students who have been tormenting her begin to appear one at a time as she watches, waking up the next day with real physical damage- a broken tooth or arm, hair pulled out in a clump. They claim the damage is from accidents but all remember bad dreams.

 

This wouldn’t normally be concrete enough for a police investigation, but after parents insist, a cop is sent to investigate, who happens to be Beka’s neighbor, Mike Wilson. Mike is a couple years older than Beka and has a crush on her. Despite her being a potential suspect and it being completely inappropriate, they start dating.

 

Meanwhile things with the Raven are escalating inside Beka’s magical Poe-inspired dreams. She asks the Raven, who has stepped things up and is now killing, to stop, and he refuses. She realizes he is not merely a dream creature, but a person who can invade dreams who has taken a personal interest in her.

 

I liked the premise a lot, but I felt like the story started to go off the rails with the police investigation and other plot threads once we got closer to the end.

 

Contains: bullying, brief description of rape, scenes of torture and murder.

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Book Review: Man Made Monsters by Andrea L. Rogers, illustrated by Jeff Edwards

Cover art for Man Made Monsters by Andrea L. Rogers and Jeff Edwards

 

Man Made Monsters by Andrea L. Rogers, illustrated by Jeff Edwards

Levine Querido, 2022

ISBN-13: 9781646141791

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition  Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

 

Cherokee writer Andrea L. Rogers makes her YA debut with Man Made Monsters with this 18-story anthology that traces one Cherokee family across time. She starts in the 1830s with the tribe forced off their land and the monster that follows them, and carries the family through to the future with a science fiction story. There are stories of commonly told supernatural monsters, like werewolves and vampires, but also monsters from the Cherokee tradition, such as Deer Woman, one of my new favorite legends. There are also very human monsters. Suicide, domestic violence, racism, school shootings, sexual assault, and indigenous dispossession are heavy topics in this book. Cherokee artist and language technologist Jeff Edwards includes fascinating artwork that accompanies the stories in this anthology.

 

While each of the stories in this anthology have something unique about them, a few of them became my favorites. “Man Made Monsters,” written as a series of letters, concerns a man playing Dr. Frankenstein looking for a means to create life from death. With the death of her little brother looming, Suzanna takes the man’s notes and research to heart. Something common for Victorian-era Gothic novels, Rogers uses this series of letters well to drive this story. I have a soft spot for Gothic novels, and I would have read a whole volume on this storyline alone.

 

In “Homecoming,” Rabbit Wilson’s older brother Joseph is slated to come home from the war with the other wounded “Cherokee boys.” While there is a ghost in this story, the most haunting vision is when Joseph arrives home.

 

“Me and My Monster,” set in 1969, centers on the short-lived relationship between the Goat Man and Gina after he saves her from being assaulted by a bad date. While I would not consider this a horror story, their tale ends in a tragedy of sorts.

 

In “Shame on the Moon,” another story set in 1969, Jimmy King is a self-conscious teenage werewolf football player. His sister, turned into a vampire by a rich white kid from an opposing team, led to his accidental transformation by an old friend. Something locally interesting for me is the mention of the song “Wichita Lineman.” I am a transplant to Wichita, and a few friends here have talked about the song in passing. Seeing this show up, I took the time to listen to it. I reread the story then, and it seemed to add that much more desperation to Jimmy’s search.

 

Sissy and Jisdu are stuck out in the cold in “Snow Day,” set in 1979. When they make it home after a difficult and painful trek, they are able to get into the old Cadillac in the closed up garage, where they turn it on, thinking the heater will keep them warm. While Jisdu sleeps, Sissy sees the ghost of her cousin, who tries to save their lives.

 

“Deer Women” is a new twist on the legend of Deer Woman. When Sali’s friend Lisa doesn’t show up for school, she and their other friend, Quanah, get worried. The trio is working on an art project centered around the legend of Deer Woman when she goes missing. After some expert sleuthing, they track Lisa who emerges from a drainpipe where she had been hiding. The girls may have discovered why other Native girls in the area have gone missing, and why it won’t happen again.

 

One of the futuristic stories, “I Come From the Water,” set in 2029, is told through multiple perspectives. In the story that comes just before this one, the band The Toadies are mentioned, and the title of this story is one of their songs, and one that happens to be favourite of mine. Rogers includes little things like this in her stories that are just genius. I recommend listening to the song after reading this one.

 

An interesting aspect of this book is that with the space in between the chapters, the reader can put together what happened with the family as the next story picks up. It’s an ingenious way to drive the overarching story. I thought it would be difficult to follow, given the massive time span, but it was surprisingly coherent, and I was never confused. It helped that at the beginning of each story, Rogers included pertinent names and dates. I think even without those added, I would have been able to follow the plot. Each story flows well into the next. Rogers is an author I will keep my eye on. She graduated with an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, and her work as been published in literary journals; in You Too? 25 Voices Share Their #METoo stories from Inkyard Press; in Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids, and more.



I am not sure if the artwork created by Jeff Edwards was in their final versions as I read an ARC copy of Man Made Monsters, but I liked what I saw. Edwards is an award-winning Cherokee graphic artist and is a language activist who has worked for the Cherokee Nation for over 20 years. He attended Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, KS, and deceived an Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts and completed his Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

 

Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker