My Dearest Darkest: Sapphic Horror
*Bustle Best Book of March 2022
*Buzzfeed Highly Anticipated YA Novel
*Lambda Literary Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+
*BookRiot Best New Dark Academia YA Book
Wilder Girls meets The Craft in this Sapphic horror debut that asks: what price would you be willing to pay to achieve your deepest desires?
Finch Chamberlin is the newest transfer student to the ultra-competitive Ulalume Academy... but she's also not what she seems. Months before school started, Finch and her parents got into an accident that should have left her dead at the bottom of the river. But something monstrous, and ancient, and terrifying, wouldn't let her drown. Finch doesn't know why she woke up after her heart stopped, but since dying she's felt a constant pull from the school and the surrounding town of Rainwater, like something on the island is calling to her.
Selena St. Clair sees right through Finch, and she knows something is seriously wrong with her. But despite Selena's suspicion, she feels drawn to Finch and has a sinking feeling that from now on the two will be inexplicably linked to one another.
One night Finch, Selena, and her friends accidentally summon a carnivorous creature of immense power in the depths of the school. It promises to grant every desire the girls have kept locked away in their insecure hearts--beauty, power, adoration--in exchange for a price: human body parts. But as the cost of their wanting becomes more deadly, Finch and Selena must learn to work together to stop the horror they unleashed, before it consumes the entire island.
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Community Reviews
This book had all the ingredients I thought I was signing up for: creepy boarding school? Check. Gothic atmosphere? Supposedly. Mysterious powers and strange rituals? Maybe, eventually. But the story is lost under layers of self-congratulatory identity flag-waving at the expense of actually build a compelling narrative.
What could have been a moody, twisty dive into the occult turned instead into a clunky parade of buzzwords, cause célèbre platitudes, and one-dimensional characters whose primary function seemed to be shouting âLook at me!â louder than the actual plot.
Thereâs a way to weave identity and theme into a story so it deepens the experience. This⦠wasn't that. Unfinished, uninterested, and unfooled.
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