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A review by thebakersbooks
Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand
4.0
4.5/5 stars - a hard-to-put-down cinematic adventure
If you scooped the heart out of one of the girl-detective mysteries I loved as a child and filled the resulting hole with beautiful, secretive people and the dark atmosphere you'd expect from a show on the CW, you'd get Sawkill Girls. Three teenage girls—Marion, Zoey, and Val—find their lives inextricably tangled by an escalating series of murders on Sawkill Rock, an Atlantic island that is home to the east coast elite.
Claire Legrand drives rapid-fire action scenes home with prose that is spare yet precise. In structure and imagery, Sawkill Girls feels like a scary movie with the perfect amount of jump scares and blood—the kind that shows the monster just enough to be really terrifying. I had no trouble picturing every scene in vivid, visceral detail.And yet, I found some of the scariest moments revolved around Roy Briggs and The Hand of Light. The way they treated the girls' fight near the end as a titillating scene played out for their eyes was realistic and awfully augmented by them groping the girls and arming them to force escalation.
Remember I mentioned the CW? Sawkill Girls diverges from their shows in the essential fact that it includes LGBT+ characters who are well-written and essential to the story, not plot devices or played for angst when they're killed off after a short time. Zoey is asexual, Marion expresses interest in boys and girls (I don't think anyone actually says how she identifies), and Val is (I think) a lesbian. There's a wlw romance and several wonderful discussions about Zoey and those around her coming to understand that asexuality doesn't mean she's broken. It's all beautifully executed.And the gay characters don't die!
I've never read anything quite like this, so I don't have direct comp titles. However, I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes their mystery with a dose of supernatural horror, and anybody who enjoys shows like The Vampire Diaries and Riverdale but wishes they'd stop queerbaiting and/or burying their gays.
If you scooped the heart out of one of the girl-detective mysteries I loved as a child and filled the resulting hole with beautiful, secretive people and the dark atmosphere you'd expect from a show on the CW, you'd get Sawkill Girls. Three teenage girls—Marion, Zoey, and Val—find their lives inextricably tangled by an escalating series of murders on Sawkill Rock, an Atlantic island that is home to the east coast elite.
Claire Legrand drives rapid-fire action scenes home with prose that is spare yet precise. In structure and imagery, Sawkill Girls feels like a scary movie with the perfect amount of jump scares and blood—the kind that shows the monster just enough to be really terrifying. I had no trouble picturing every scene in vivid, visceral detail.
Remember I mentioned the CW? Sawkill Girls diverges from their shows in the essential fact that it includes LGBT+ characters who are well-written and essential to the story, not plot devices or played for angst when they're killed off after a short time. Zoey is asexual, Marion expresses interest in boys and girls (I don't think anyone actually says how she identifies), and Val is (I think) a lesbian. There's a wlw romance and several wonderful discussions about Zoey and those around her coming to understand that asexuality doesn't mean she's broken. It's all beautifully executed.
I've never read anything quite like this, so I don't have direct comp titles. However, I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes their mystery with a dose of supernatural horror, and anybody who enjoys shows like The Vampire Diaries and Riverdale but wishes they'd stop queerbaiting and/or burying their gays.