Abstract
Reviewed by: Direwood by Catherine Yu Natalie Berglind Yu, Catherine Direwood. Page Street, 2022 [288p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781645676126 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781645676133 $9.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 7-10 Glen Hills, Michigan, is the perfect suburban town to raise a cookie cutter nuclear family—if you're white, that is. Aja, her role model sister Fiona, and her father make up the only Chinese family in the area, and the neighbors don't let them forget it. Subtle microaggressions increase when Fiona vanishes on the night of her seventeenth birthday, followed by several of her friends. The disappearances are accompanied by strange occurrences: storms have been bringing rust-colored rain and glittering, black bugs are spreading everywhere, and a menacing gloom lays heavy on the town. Aja's not totally surprised, then, when an alluring vampire shows up at the door, finally revealing where her sister has gone—but is she following him to get Fiona back, or will she succumb to the same temptations that stole Fiona away? An intriguing combination of horror and coming of age, the novel follows Aja as she plots to defeat the vampires that keep the neighborhood teens in thrall while simultaneously coping with the feeling of being overshadowed by her sister. Horror elements are gothic and truly grotesque, and Yu pulls on classic vampiric imagery, tying the seductive monsters to death and decay as they hide in an abandoned church crawling with cannibalistic, blood-sucking caterpillars and butterflies. The nuance of the narrative comes from Aja and her emotional hurdles, perhaps accurately perceiving the help of her former best friend as a white savior complex (Aja is Chinese American) but believably unsure of how to deal with it, especially since Aja could use the backup. Background elements such as slap bracelets, Courtney Love references, and dial-up Internet firmly place this in the 1990s, before the characters could use a cell phone for help. The combination of the setting, Aja's emotional journey, the eerie vampires, and the metaphors for change through metamorphosis culminate in a truly effective horror story that will have readers haunted for weeks after it's finished. [End Page 70] Copyright © 2022 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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