Friday, June 17, 2011

CBCOTW

Or, Creepy Book Cover of the Week:





Kids scare me. Not all kids--really, it's only when creators intend for them to be slightly off, like in The Orphanage. I suppose I do tend to find the suspiciously overjoyed children hanging out with Barney to be a tad frightening, too.

This girl on the cover of Jennifer McMahon's Don't Breathe a Word gets to me, which is the point as the story is, according to Publisher's Weekly, an "affecting portrait of family dysfunction overlaid with the eeriness of the supernatural." A 12-year-old Lisa tells everyone that she'll be departing for the fairy world, where she'll be happier away from her drugged out father. And, 15 years ago, she disappeared. Younger brother, Sam, believes she was abducted, and then gets a call from someone claiming to be Lisa, which sets him and his girlfriend on the case of finding out who the caller really was.

I haven't read it. My prediction: the girl obviously turned evil and is luring her brother and his girlfriend to the land of the fae to be brutally sacrificed in order to become evil queen. Or, she's a ghost, vengefully haunting Sam from beyond for some reason we don't know. In a shattering twist at the end, we learn that child-Sam killed his sister when they were kids, and that he's been the evil one all along, not Lisa/her ghost. Okay, one more...um, amnesia. Lisa was abducted or ran off on her own and somehow bonked her noggin, rendering her amnesiac for 15 years, at which time things clear up (maybe a second bonk, maybe she found herself back at home, whatever), but she loses the last 15 years of her memory. So of course she calls Sam and is scared, because she's mentally 12-year-old Lisa again.

I'm sure the book is much better than anything I could come up with--it would have to be in order to live up to that spooky child cover.

Would you like to read it? Check our catalog for availability.
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