When you go into a Blythe Woolston novel, you know to expect your mind to be worked out. You know it’s going to be a novel that will require a lot of you mentally and you know it’s going to be a novel you want to talk about.

Black Helicopters is no exception. In fact, Black Helicopters took me three reads before I felt like I had a good grasp on what I wanted to say about the story. But that’s not a bad thing. In fact, the compulsion I had to reread it that many times is testament to how much there is packed into this little book. As a heads up, note that the bulk of this review is spoiler-filled. This is because Woolston’s novel is not very long and not entirely heavy on plot. It’s the sort of book that lends itself to analysis. 

15-year-old Valkyrie — Val — has had a hell of a life. If it can even be called that. Her mom was killed by the black helicopters when she was young, and her father went to great lengths to protect her and her brother from Those People thereafter. But Bo, her brother, had way more privileges than she did. He could actually go out. It was her job to stay hidden, to know the plan, to understand just how bad Those People were. That way, when they came back, she would be able to save everyone. She would do so by destroying them. 

Then the house she and her family live in burns down and their father is now dead. It’s up to Bo and Val to establish some sort of life now. Except, they’ve been so indoctrinated with contempt for all they’ve lost thanks to Those People, they see nothing but the need to destroy. And even in seeking safe places, they’re finding more dangerous places. They’re finding out about the true life dad lived. That true life means that, well, there’s no hope here. 

Val is herself a weapon. 

Bleak might be a nice word to describe Woolston’s third book. What’s at heart in the story is a girl who has been brainwashed to believe she needs to be paranoid about the world around her, particularly in regards to government. As such, she is herself a tool of destruction, led to believe that her duty in life is to bring it down, since it was what brought so much devastation to her own life. But it’s not just that she’s been brainwashed to believe her duty is to destroy the system, she is literally the tool by which the destruction must happen. She is the Queen.

Woolston marries Val’s story with a brilliant and mind-bending metaphor about chess. But even though she’s Queen and she has the power to keep the King in check, ultimately, she is reminded again and again that she can and will never rise above where she is now. There is a painful scene in the story where Val’s body becomes the payment for her debts. But it’s not so much what those men do to her to remind her of her place, it’s what happens with the gun immediately after the first time someone collects the rent. The violence and anger and emptiness of it all is penetrating. Is a reinforcement of all she’s experienced in her life.

Val’s a weapon because the only way she can get out is through death. And where this story takes a turn is that, when the plans for destruction are sidetracked because of another person’s decision to seek momentary jollies, Val’s left alone to her own devices. She’s seeking the help of a high school boy who knows she’s the girl to be watching out for. And when he’s kind enough to help her and do so knowing she could at any second destroy him and his little brother, Val has her turnaround. She knows the death she needs — the out she needs from this existence — can only be her own. No one else has to pay for what she’s already suffered.

This is a little book, but it is dense. It’s literary, and what is not said is more powerful than what’s actually said. It’s masterfully crafted and requires rereading to pick up on how the timelines interact, how Val’s character comes to be as it is, and to appreciate the ending as it is. There are no punches pulled in this book: it’s dark. It’s not dystopia nor futuristic — this is a slice of life by the likes we rarely, if ever, read or see. This is contemporary. What I appreciate about Woolston’s writing and what shines through in Black Helicopters is that readers discover a whole different world operating within their own. This dark, paranoid world isn’t one of the future or one of other times. It is a slice of today’s world to which we’re so often not privy daily nor within books. 

There are a lot of interesting threads here about gender, about power and privilege, about choices. I’m fascinated, too, by the depiction of rural life, of what I believe to have been drug and human trafficking issues that were at the heart of her father’s life/what caused the death of her mother and the desire for revenge on both sides, sex/body politics/ownership, violence, government paranoia, and more. I’m not sure how so much is packed into 160 pages but damn. There are also alternating time lines in this book, making the experience even more pulsating, as the pieces of the past click into place with the present. 

It’s hard to say this early it’s a potential award book, but I see the Printz committee looking at this one closely. Black Helicopters will appeal to readers who want a deeply literary novel with layers which can be unpacked endlessly. Each read of this book brought something new to the surface for me, and there are so many other threads that can be teased out that I may not even be conscious of from my own reading. While I haven’t read Elizabeth Scott’s Grace, I’ve got a feeling there might be some interesting parallels between Scott’s book and Woolston’s which could make them worthwhile read alikes. Pass this book off to readers who want a challenge and who want to work for a really satisfying pay off in their reading. 

Review copy received from the publisher. Black Helicopters will be available from Candlewick on March 26.

Carey and Janessa live in the woods — Nessa’s been there her entire young life but Carey’s had a taste of the outside world, way back in the day. Their mother brought them there to protect them, but mom is never around. She’s always out, looking for a way to feed the girls, for a way to keep them safe. 

If You Find Me begins when that all changes. Carey and Nessa are taken from their home in the woods by authorities, who introduce them to their biological father and inform them they’re going to be released into his custody. 

Mom was not coming back for them. 

Murdoch’s book follows Carey and Nessa’s reintroduction to the world — how do they adjust to living in a house again? With a family? With a new sister? Why did their mother take them away from civilization and into the woods? And maybe the most important question: what happened to those girls in the woods to make them who they are today? Because there’s something even darker going on. Because these girls are survivors in more than just one way. 

Surviving isn’t always pretty. 

The concept and storytelling were compelling; this was a plot unlike any other I’d read before. I was hooked and blew through the book in no time. However, I think that was where I found a number of problems with If You Find Me: it was too polished, too tidy, too easily resolved. I got through the book way too easily, as did the characters. Sure, they had their challenges, but they didn’t give me pause as a reader. 

I just accepted and went along and I’m not entirely sure I should have.  

Spoilers for the next few paragraphs, so skip down if you don’t want them. This book needed more depth and less back story info dumping, particularly in the final section where we get the entire history of Carey and Nessa. I starting finding the technique of weaving the back story into the narrative via Carey’s flashbacks distracting and unbelievable in the second section of the book, especially when we get a flashback where Carey’s been used by her mother to make a little cash by way of her body. Although I’d gotten the sense there was something off about Carey and something damaging to her, this came up a little too late for me to believe and pushed the story over the top. Even the final revelation — that a man had come to the trailer and raped Carey and attempted to rape Nessa before Carey shot and killed him — worked better for me than that. 

I also had a tough time buying Carey’s voice. Even though I could see something in her position being mature, the language didn’t work. There were multiple times a turn of phrase or an observation felt off. A girl raised in the woods, with no education beyond what she could ascertain in the world right around her, wouldn’t have the extensive vocabulary she did, not would she have the ease of social connection she did (and while it wasn’t always easy for Carey, it was almost as if she was undamaged from her life in many ways that should have been intensely damaging). Not to mention that Carey is 14. She’s not 17 or 18. She’s very young. Likewise, the writing itself came off as trying too hard at times, working in one too many forest-related metaphors in situations where it was unnecessary. It dragged down the pace in places where pacing didn’t need to be slowed. The author’s hand came through a bit too much for me — repeatedly reminding the reader, for example, how beautiful the girls were, how intelligent they were. It read as almost too protective of the characters. 

Subplots in the book were wrapped up too cleanly for me or were in and of themselves too convenient and contrived. I didn’t buy the tension between Carey and her new sister Delaney. I understood and sympathized with both of their situations; I could see why Delaney would feel like getting two new siblings after 15 years of being an only child would suck. However, the turnaround in their relationship was not satisfying or believable. I had trouble buying into the relationship between Ryan and Carey, too: how he figured out who she was so quickly and easily didn’t work for me. They were so young when Carey was kidnapped by her mother, so him recognizing the last name was a stretch. I wish there’d been more story about adjusting to life with not just a biological father the girls had been taken from, but also, I’d have liked more about adjusting to life with a stepmother. These points came off too easy. I will say, Melissa was one of my favorite adults in YA in a long time. She was patient, caring, and offered real bits of wisdom and hope for the girls that were such a stark contrast to everything they’d been used to. 

While I don’t believe all characters need to act in a certain way nor that they need to bear some sort of neurosis because of their past, I do think that there are times when more character development and less glossing over of important aspects are necessary. It’s possible the unique story here, in conjunction with the literary writing, allowed for some of the more questionable choices in the book to get through. There is something very ugly in this book — a number of very ugly things, in fact — but I never felt that ugliness, that quest and desire for survive and the fight necessary therein, ever quite came together. 

I also don’t need to mention that the romance was completely unnecessary. 

Despite the flaws, I enjoyed reading this book, and it reminded me a lot of Carol Lynch Williams’s Glimpse. I think this could have benefited from more, even: there were a lot of fascinating threads and a lot of subplots to explore, but they weren’t. I also felt that the ending of the book, where we finally learned the whole of what made Carey (and Nessa) who they were, left enough for real further exploration, too.  If You Find Me is imperfect, but it’s enjoyable enough because of the fresh plot. 

If You Find Me will be available March 26 from St. Martin’s Press. Review copy received from the publisher. 

So Scowler was my first Daniel Kraus book.

It will not be my last.

If you’re a fan of horror — the kind of horror that doesn’t come from specters or werewolves or other creatures outside the world as we know it — then you will want to pick this book up. It is not, and I repeat myself here, it is not for the weak stomached or weak of heart. This book is brutal and depicts some of the most horrific scenes I’ve ever read. The kind of scenes that involved putting the book down mid-scene so I could collect myself before soldiering on. It’s not done to be sensational, though. It’s the reality of the story.

The year is 1981. It’s August. It’s hot. It’s rural Iowa. Oh, also there’s the possibility of large meteorites falling to the earth (does this sound eerie or what?). Nineteen-year-old Ry’s little sister lost one of her teeth and neither of them can find it lying anywhere on their dead family farm.

But the farm wasn’t always dead. When Ry’s father was there, he made sure the place was thriving. He watched over it carefully. He watched over all of them, in fact, with the kind of eyes and hands a man dying for control and power did. Ry’s mother Jo Beth was one subject of Marvin’s need for power: she wasn’t allowed to sew or mend clothing, despite having a talent for it. Marvin didn’t want anyone thinking that he wasn’t being a good enough farmer that he had to employ his wife in another job to make ends meet.

There was more than that, though. Marvin was the picture of an abusive husband and abusive father. Scowler is told in alternating time lines, beginning in those couple of days in 1981 and then flashing back to 1971 and 1972. This was the height of Marvin’s worst behavior. When he did something absolutely terrible to Ry and did something even harsher to Jo Beth. The kind of thing that forced Ry to help his mother. To pull her out of the window and toward freedom.

It was then when Marvin went to jail.

It was also then that Jo Beth pursued her own interest in sewing. When she made the dress that lived in the room upstairs. When she let the farm die.

As readers, we’re sucked into the back story, wherein Ry seeks solace in three of his childhood toys: Mr. Furrington (a stuffed animal), Jesus Christ (a figurine), and the Scowler (the ugliest, most misshapen and disgusting toy to exist). Throughout his therapy sessions and throughout the book, we learn that while these may or may not be real objects — depending entirely on your reading — we do learn that these three objects are aspects of Ry’s personality. More on that in a second.

Flash back to 1981. There’s a knock at the door, and it’s a stranger wandering by. This is odd and unsettling to the Burke family because, well, they live in the middle of no where. It’s not like strangers just wander to their farm in the middle of no where Iowa. But this isn’t any old stranger: it’s a prison escapee.

There was an explosion at the high security jail. He got out.

And so did Marvin. Now, more than one meteorite is about the crash land on the Burke’s land.

Ry’s repression and compartmentalization of his fear toward Marvin manifested after he went to jail, and now that Marvin’s back, it’s coming out again. Where we learned that Ry was forced to rid himself of his three toys, we also discover he needs them to work through the pain and torture about to befall him and his family again now that dad’s back. And while he may not have the objects themselves, he knows he has to tap into those aspects of his personality in order to make heads or tails of what to do to protect his family. He doesn’t want what happened to his mother to happen again, and he certain doesn’t want it to happen to his sister, either.

Enter Scowler.

Much as Ry wants to be a good kid and much as he doesn’t want to employ the same sort of violence that his father relied upon too much to get what it was he wanted, Ry knows he has to channel the spirit of Scowler. It scares him to do this. Even though it’s clear Marvin is still as problematic as he was when he was in jail — especially now that he thinks selling the meteorite that’s crashed onto the farm will be the solution to all of the family’s problems — Ry can’t let himself be angry. He can’t let out the Scowler inside.

That is, until he does. Until it’s become clear that his father will continue to hurt, haunt, and manipulate the family until he gets what he wants. Until he destroys what it his Jo Beth loves. Until he physically destroys Ry. Until he begins to destroy Sarah, too.

Scowler is dark, disturbing, and brutal. There is plenty of blood shed. There is more than blood shed. There is a body count and — spoiler warning — there might be a dead animal in this one, too. Kraus knows horror, so know that going in. You’re not going to be getting anything sappy or anything half-hearted here, which is what makes this a powerful read. There are no shortcuts. Marvin is one of the ugliest characters I’ve read in a long time. It’s so easy to like Ry, too, and maybe what makes him so likable and sympathetic isn’t his situation; it’s the fact he wants nothing more than to not be like his dad. He knows the way that abusive home lives work. He knows the chances are there he could become like his dad. That’s precisely why he’s so hesitant to embrace Scowler.

That’s also why the 1980s setting in this book works. Aside from allowing some of the important plot points to be sidestepped (the jail destruction would have been Googled in a second in today’s world and the police would have been on it), what makes the setting important is the question of whether or not Ry will become a good person or whether he’s destined to turn into the kind of man his father was. We don’t get to know if there is a happily ever after or if there ever will be. There’s only the end we’re given, which isn’t really closed. And that’s the way an ending in a book like this should be. Even if we’re given many answers throughout the story, walking away with as many — if not more questions — is what makes a good horror story successful.

Kraus doesn’t just deliver a great story, though. His writing is strong and solid, and the depictions of horrific events doesn’t make you question how bad things are. You know. You know who these characters are and what they’re going through is palpable. I marked a number of really great passages throughout, but my favorite line is this (it’s a bit of a spoiler but by this point, it should be clear the entire review cannot be written without spoiler): “Being made of liquid and bone, rather than cloth and steel, might make you more breakable, but being breakable, he decided, was a thrilling thing.”

Hand Scowler off to your readers who want dark realistic fiction that could only be best described as horror. Readers looking for books like Stephen King’s will find much to enjoy here. Michael Grant, who blurbed the book, called it the “demon offspring of Stephen King’s The Shining and Hitchcock’s Psycho” and having knowledge of both those reference, I’ll say that’s about as spot on as you can get. I think readers who dig books in the style of Adam Rapp or Blythe Woolston will find much here. It’s all about how ugly we humans can be and are to one another. This is one of the most memorable books I’ve read in a long time.

Scowler is available today through Random House. Review copy delivered personally to me at ALA (thanks, Kristen Kittscher).