Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones
by Micah Dean Hicks
What is it about:
Swine Hill was full of the dead. Their ghosts were thickest near the abandoned downtown, where so many of the town’s hopes had died generation by generation. They lingered in the places that mattered to them, and people avoided those streets, locked those doors, stopped going into those rooms... They could hurt you. Worse, they could change you.
Jane is haunted. Since she was a child, she has carried a ghost girl that feeds on the secrets and fears of everyone around her, whispering to Jane what they are thinking and feeling, even when she doesn’t want to know. Henry, Jane’s brother, is ridden by a genius ghost that forces him to build strange and dangerous machines. Their mother is possessed by a lonely spirit that burns anyone she touches. In Swine Hill, a place of defeat and depletion, there are more dead than living.
When new arrivals begin scoring precious jobs at the last factory in town, both the living and the dead are furious. This insult on the end of a long economic decline sparks a conflagration. Buffeted by rage on all sides, Jane must find a way to save her haunted family and escape the town before it kills them.
What did I think of it:
I will confess I'm not easily scared by stories, but this book...
A minor spoiler about this story is that the new arrivals in this book are pig people. You can guess I was totally rooting for them, and that they didn't have it easy!
This story tackles some very current themes: the poverty and loss of jobs in rural areas, fear of newcomers, fear of the unknown. Still it does so in a really enticing way, weaving a creepy and tense atmosphere. The ghosts and spirits inhabiting the town and people are scary, not in the least because some of them have very nefarious motives, some of the well-meaning ones were the scariest in how they hurt the people they touch.
As thing escalate and humans, spirits, and pig people clash things get more and more dicey in Swine Hill. In the midst of all this Jane and her brother Henry will have to make choices and find away to stay alive while still being able to live with themselves and their ghosts.
I didn't know what to expect going into this book apart from there being ghosts, but I was soon swept up in the events and the emotions. I rooted for Jane, Henry, and the pig people knowing chances were high my heart might be broken. Still I couldn't put the book down, and I let it take me on an emotional ride full of weirdness and creepiness. This book turned out to be so much better than I expected when I started it, and you bet I'll treasure and reread it.
Why should you read it:
It's weird, creepy, and painfully beautiful.
buy from bookdepository
No comments:
Post a Comment