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The sun was going down like a circle of construction paper falling off a bulletin board. No longer the yellow bulb of daytime, it was a sinking orange half circle. Meghan yearned to run toward the sun and catch it before it vanished.
An unusual YA dark fantasy/understated horror novel, best read without knowing anything about it beyond the premise, which is that a creepy neglected girl in the neighborhood, Lannie, has a strange power.
Following Cooney's usual MO, this book is much better than it needs to be. Some of the writing is very beautiful, some is quite funny, and it's unexpectedly observant in unexpected ways. It shifts between various tight-third person POVs and an omniscient POV which points out truths about teenagers that only an adult would know. The worlds of the teenagers can be extremely petty and small, but they're simultaneously dealing with very big emotional issues and also life-or-death situations.
There's a remarkably well-done and delicate balance between very mundane daily life, unsettling horror, real moral dilemmas, and fantasy metaphors for real-life concerns. This book looks like throwaway horror, but it's much much more than that.
I went in knowing nothing but the premise, and that was a very good way to read it. I recommend it.
The prologue is a gorgeous, spooky piece of writing.
I loved Meghan's revelation near the end that her parents absolutely knew she preferred the Trevors' house to her own, and were hurt by it while also understanding why - and that her own family was just as loving as the Trevors, but in a less sitcom-meets-Ray Bradbury idyllic way. In fact by the end the messy, cozy wonderfulness of the Trevors starts feeling distinctly hollow and unsettling - they're justified in their ruthlessness to protect what's theirs, but they are very ruthless.
Among other things, the book is a stealth retelling of "The Snow Queen," complete with the Snow Queen (Lannie), Kay (West), Meghan (Gerda), and Tuesday (the robber girl). I didn't realize this until about 80% of the way through, so that was a very cool surprise.
"The Snow Queen" ends with Gerda's love melting the ice in Kay's heart, at which point Gerda gets him back and the Queen takes off. The equivalent in this book would be for Meghan's love to return West to her and make Lannie go away.
Instead, Meghan not only chooses not to kill Lannie, but her feelings for West and Tuesday change when she learns that they're willing to do so. She turns her back on them both, and takes in the Snow Queen.
Unlike many such "should we kill the monster" dilemmas, this one isn't an obvious choice. If anything, it's weighted toward the idea that Lannie should be killed. She is dangerous. She is deeply creepy. She's romantically/sexually coercing West, and if that hasn't gone physically farther than some low-key touching, it clearly will eventually. She's unlikable and doesn't seem interested in being redeemed. West and Tuesday are completely justified in wanting to kill her - in fact for them (actually, for Meghan too) it's self-defense.
But Lannie is also a girl who was never loved and never had a chance to learn how to get love beyond trying to extract it with brute force. Meghan doesn't have an obligation to fix her, and maybe she's not fixable. But in the end, Meghan turns her back on the people she previously loved and regarded as the ideal, and brings the monster in from the cold. Maybe it won't end well, but it's as powerful a statement as that of the original fairytale, from completely the opposite direction.
The end is satisfying on its own, but it also begs for fanfic. Lannie thaws out emotionally and learns to do something more positive with her powers? Lannie embarks on a mission of revenge, excepting only Meghan? Lannie switches her creepy, obsessive affections to Meghan? Meghan acquires a semi-feral murder girlfriend who will do anything she perceives in Meghan's best interests or desires?
Content notes: There's nothing explicit or graphic, but the book is centrally about consent and violating consent, abuse in various forms (control, neglect, lack of love), and other emotionally difficult/complex topics. A dog probably dies.
I now feel like reading more Cooney. Any suggestions?
An unusual YA dark fantasy/understated horror novel, best read without knowing anything about it beyond the premise, which is that a creepy neglected girl in the neighborhood, Lannie, has a strange power.
Following Cooney's usual MO, this book is much better than it needs to be. Some of the writing is very beautiful, some is quite funny, and it's unexpectedly observant in unexpected ways. It shifts between various tight-third person POVs and an omniscient POV which points out truths about teenagers that only an adult would know. The worlds of the teenagers can be extremely petty and small, but they're simultaneously dealing with very big emotional issues and also life-or-death situations.
There's a remarkably well-done and delicate balance between very mundane daily life, unsettling horror, real moral dilemmas, and fantasy metaphors for real-life concerns. This book looks like throwaway horror, but it's much much more than that.
I went in knowing nothing but the premise, and that was a very good way to read it. I recommend it.
The prologue is a gorgeous, spooky piece of writing.
I loved Meghan's revelation near the end that her parents absolutely knew she preferred the Trevors' house to her own, and were hurt by it while also understanding why - and that her own family was just as loving as the Trevors, but in a less sitcom-meets-Ray Bradbury idyllic way. In fact by the end the messy, cozy wonderfulness of the Trevors starts feeling distinctly hollow and unsettling - they're justified in their ruthlessness to protect what's theirs, but they are very ruthless.
Among other things, the book is a stealth retelling of "The Snow Queen," complete with the Snow Queen (Lannie), Kay (West), Meghan (Gerda), and Tuesday (the robber girl). I didn't realize this until about 80% of the way through, so that was a very cool surprise.
"The Snow Queen" ends with Gerda's love melting the ice in Kay's heart, at which point Gerda gets him back and the Queen takes off. The equivalent in this book would be for Meghan's love to return West to her and make Lannie go away.
Instead, Meghan not only chooses not to kill Lannie, but her feelings for West and Tuesday change when she learns that they're willing to do so. She turns her back on them both, and takes in the Snow Queen.
Unlike many such "should we kill the monster" dilemmas, this one isn't an obvious choice. If anything, it's weighted toward the idea that Lannie should be killed. She is dangerous. She is deeply creepy. She's romantically/sexually coercing West, and if that hasn't gone physically farther than some low-key touching, it clearly will eventually. She's unlikable and doesn't seem interested in being redeemed. West and Tuesday are completely justified in wanting to kill her - in fact for them (actually, for Meghan too) it's self-defense.
But Lannie is also a girl who was never loved and never had a chance to learn how to get love beyond trying to extract it with brute force. Meghan doesn't have an obligation to fix her, and maybe she's not fixable. But in the end, Meghan turns her back on the people she previously loved and regarded as the ideal, and brings the monster in from the cold. Maybe it won't end well, but it's as powerful a statement as that of the original fairytale, from completely the opposite direction.
The end is satisfying on its own, but it also begs for fanfic. Lannie thaws out emotionally and learns to do something more positive with her powers? Lannie embarks on a mission of revenge, excepting only Meghan? Lannie switches her creepy, obsessive affections to Meghan? Meghan acquires a semi-feral murder girlfriend who will do anything she perceives in Meghan's best interests or desires?
Content notes: There's nothing explicit or graphic, but the book is centrally about consent and violating consent, abuse in various forms (control, neglect, lack of love), and other emotionally difficult/complex topics. A dog probably dies.
I now feel like reading more Cooney. Any suggestions?
From:
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The genuine difficulty of the moral dilemma is one of my favorite things about this--most authors signpost it so clearly when the "right answer" is going to be extending a hand to the villain, but Cooney not only doesn't do that, she doesn't even give you any guarantee that it turns out okay. And it's hard to know whether or not it will, as you said! Lannie has feelings, and she's been given a horribly raw deal in life by being so unloved, but she's also explicitly cruel and unscrupulous, and she enjoys people's terror. She kills a dog! She off-screen freezes some girl in the background who, as far as we know, never gets unfrozen! She's not even funny or larger-than-life evil, she's low-key repugnant to everyone! That all that's true and Meghan makes the choice to save her anyway gives it a lot more weight.
And it's the kind of moral complexity that I tend to associate with Cooney, which is really nice. (And also why I felt SO BETRAYED by the much-later Milk Carton sequel. I can't believe I found a sanitary pad in the library copy of that I read and that still wasn't my least favorite thing about that experience.) Ditto little bits like the scenes with Meghan's mom, where the humanity and nuance of these YA parents who have been--as is typical with YA parents--mostly in the background suddenly becomes clear.
I totally vote for Lannie becoming Meghan's semi-feral murder girlfriend.
The horror in this book is also extremely effective. Lannie making West sit in the car next to frozen Jason, the snow falling in frozen Meghan's open eyes, the image of Lannie stuck in the truck while the Trevors all sit inside smiling ... it's all really well-done.
From:
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"What if freeze tag really froze people" is the kind of premise that seems like you could barely eke out an atmospheric short story from it, so I'm so impressed that she made it into a real novel. Her backmatter mentions that she often was handed a premise and told to make it into a novel and that she really enjoyed doing that, and you can tell.
You mentioned Carrie White earlier, and Lannie does have a similar genuinely repellent quality (only more so). She's both unloved and unlovable, which makes Meghan's choice have real weight. It's so much easier to decide to take risks for someone you like.
From:
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Yes, Lannie really is even more off-putting to people than Carrie--it's hard to picture Lannie temporarily winning anyone over on prom night, no matter how nicely she might clean up.
Cooney's facility for taking on prompts would have made her a perfect fit for exchanges.
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I also love the Losing Christina trilogy - psychological horror about a girl in Maine who realizes that the high school principal and his English teacher wife get their kicks by gaslighting their students into insanity. IMO the third book is the best, but opinions are divided - some people like the first book best.
I thought that I had read a ton of Cooney in my youth but looking at her bibliography, there is also a huge amount I never got around too. Not sure I ever even heard of this one you've reviewed here.
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