Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand
Blurb:
Three teen girls face off against an insidious monster that preys upon young women in this YA dark fantasy novel from a New York Times–bestselling author.
Named one of YALSA's Best Fiction Books for Young AdultsA Bram Stoker Award NomineeA Lambda Literary Award Nominee
Who are the Sawkill Girls?
Marion: The newbie. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Weighed down by tragedy and hungry for love she's sure she'll never find.
Zoey: The pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Maybe she's broken—or maybe everyone else is.
Val: The queen bee. Gorgeous and privileged, ruthless and regal. Words like silk and eyes like knives; a heart made of secrets and a mouth full of lies.
Their stories come together on the island of Sawkill Rock, where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an cunning creature at parties and around campfires. Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight . . . until now.
Review:
“She saw the extraordinary in the ordinary, the magic in the mundane. Hope, she thought, breathing with the tide, was a choice that only those with resolute hearts dared to make. Beware the woods and the dark, dank, deep. He'll follow you home, and he won't let you sleep.” - Sawkill Girls, Claire LeGrand
In Sawkill Girls by Claire LeGrand, Marion, her mother, and her sister are trying to remake their lives in a place that doesn’t remember the accidental death of their father. Forced to bear the burden of her family’s well-being, Marion hardly lets herself find any joy in her own activities…until she meets Valerie Mortimer, daughter of the infamous Mortimer family that lives on the island her mother, sister, and self will be working at. Except, Val’s no ordinary girl, and neither is Zoey, who keeps warning Marion away from her. Worse, there’s something in the woods that might just be after their blood—alongside the blood of the rest of the world.
I was first introduced to LeGrand’s work by the Furyborn trilogy (which I, unfortunately, have yet to finish) and immediately fell in love with her sharp prose and sharper characters. I didn’t know what to expect of Sawkill Girls, given the genre was so different from what I’d read before, but this novel was everything I hoped for in a grim horror story.
The three main characters: Zoey, Marion, and Val all start off so flawed as to even make some of them unlikeable. Despite not believing they can be redeemed, I simply couldn’t stop reading, and as the story went on I realized how much I’d fallen in love with these faulty, despicable, selfish, and interesting characters. Foils of each other, their serious, false, and sarcastic personalities helped build up the rest of the narrative around them.
I found it incredibly easy to get immersed in this novel not only due to the characters but due to the prose. Simple and efficient, it was effective in getting me to keep turning pages no matter what I was doing and where I was reading the story. I couldn’t get enough of the creepy rhymes – “beware the woods and the dark, dank, deep. He'll follow you home, and he won't let you sleep” – and the stunning setting, whose sentience added depth, context, and eeriness to the storyline in all the places that mattered.
Making the “Rock” (Sawkill island) a character of its own was a brilliant literary device and made me wonder about the extent of this world. There’s hinting in the novel that there are other monsters in other places, and other powerful girls, and it made me want to see more of this universe the story takes place in.
So authentic it felt visceral, this story was addictive from the opening page—I didn’t want to stop reading whenever I put the book down.
This story contained probably the best example of an Asexual main character I’ve ever read, alongside OCD representation, and it made me feel extremely seen and accepted as an individual, which is what every writer dreams of accomplishing when they set out to write a great story. Implementing prose and intrusive thoughts that had me grimacing and leaning forward at the same time, it was told with haunting lyricism that made everything in the narrative—from the island itself to the characters within it—feel all the more realistic.
I think my favorite thing about Sawkill Girls was that it didn’t shy away from touching on subjects that most other authors lean away from. Aspects of identity, of inhibitions we often ignore as people to remain civilized, of misogyny, of being captive to our parents, of being captive to ourselves—there were so many meaningful messages woven into the threads of the narrative that I am glad to see being represented in fiction.
This is the kind of book I’d want to read again and again, letting myself devour the pages only to start all over. I highly recommend this book for lovers of fantasy, contemporary, and kick-ass girls fighting terrible monsters and facing terrible odds!
Guest Reviewer Bio:
Mylee J. Miller is a reader and author in a never-ending fight against her infinite TBR. She enjoys reading many genres, but science fiction and fantasy of most subgenres are where she finds herself at home. She adores books with the same vibes as The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L Jensen, A Study In Drowning by Ava Reid, Little Thieves by Margaret Owen, and anything by Brandon Mull, Brandon Sanderson, Andy Weir, and Leigh Bardugo. When she’s not fighting to become a not-so-gourmet chef or walking her cat, you can find her screaming along to Imagine Dragons music and eating too much Italian food.
