Fiendish

May 19, 2014
One moment eight-year-old Clementine was happily playing in her mother’s garden; the next, she was buried alive in a basement closet, the house burning down above her. There she lay, tree roots intertwining with her limbs and hair, before being discovered 10 years later—grown to late-adolescence, her eyes sewn shut, and a bag of powerful magic around her neck, which kept her alive. Ten years ago, the “Reckoning” left Hoax County’s generally benign “craft” magic users either dead, in hiding, or living in fear on the edge of town near the Hollow, where truly dangerous supernatural creatures called fiends supposedly live in the shadows. Now, Clementine tries to discover who put her in that closet (and why) before the Reckoning returns and more innocent blood flows. Yovanoff (Paper Valentine) has a masterful touch with dialogue, and her supernatural world deftly combines Southern tradition with horrors of her own creation. There are a few minor pacing and continuity quirks, but this unnerving story will entice her fans or anyone who loves dark fantasy. Ages 12–up. Agent: Sarah Davies, Greenhouse Literary.

Starred review from April 1, 2014
The atmosphere in Yovanoff's latest is eerily reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird, if only Harper Lee's Maycomb residents had been given magical families as a focus for their bigotry. New South Bend is a typical small town, where families have known each other for generations and intolerances simmer just beneath the surface. Tension runs high between the "craft" people, town outcasts because of the magical qualities inherited from their "fiend" ancestors, and the everyday townspeople. Once, years earlier, at a time when the craft ran amok causing chaos, many townspeople burned craft homes and killed craft people, an event that has come to be known as "the reckoning." Few people realize that a young craft girl, Clementine, was magically bound and left in a trancelike state in the cellar of a burned home. When Fisher, who has more than a touch of craft blood in him, unearths Clementine, now a teenager, history begins to repeat itself. As Fisher and Clementine are drawn to each other, the craft become increasingly unruly. But this time, Clementine, fueled by her pure heart and her unique ability to enhance others' powers, is determined to control the craft and avoid another bloody confrontation. Yet old habits die hard, and Clementine finds her potential craft allies may prefer revenge for their reckoning. This beguiling amalgamation of the magical and modern worlds will have readers mesmerized. (Urban fantasy. 12-18)

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2014

Gr 9 Up-Yovanoff's writing is as thrilling and uneasy as the tales she spins. In a chilling hook, Fiendish opens with Clementine DeVore, buried in a cellar in New South Bend for 10 years with a hex bag tied to her throat and her eyes sewn shut. Impossibly, her rescuer, Eric Fisher, heard her breathing and dug her out of the ground to return her to her family, only for Clementine to discover that most people had forgotten her existence after "the reckoning." In a town segregated into fiendish people of the Willows and those who are afraid of them, the protagonist learns the hard way that cruelty is sown when people fear the unknown. Her particular brand of magic being strongest of them all, Clementine's reappearance means another reckoning is looming, one in which the creepy, frightfully unpredictable Hollow spills over its borders and terrified townspeople reduce the Willows to cinders. Clementine is kind, witty, and fearless, facing a constant stream of generational discrimination and adversity in New South Bend without wavering. Richly detailed with adolescent "firsts," such as Clementine's self-consciousness at needing a bra and her first kiss with Fisher, and equally so with grand scenes of the reckoning, this horror tale will give teens goosebumps from start to finish.-Jamie-Lee Schombs, Loyola School, New York City

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2014
Grades 9-12 Yovanoff's best book since The Replacement (2010) finds her conjuring up another sickly sweet modern myth of seemingly effortless originality. Clementine is dug out of a canning closet at age 17, barely cognizant of the craft that bound her there for the past seven years. Once the threads sewing her eyelids shut have been snipped, she reorients herself in the town of New South Bend, where a long-tabled feud between normal folk and those possessing craft is beginning to resurface. The boy who saved Clementine may be to blamehis craft invokes the power of life itselfand when the two get close, their love is combustible enough to leave ominous signs in its wake: a fish with long spindly teeth, say, or an egg cracked and leaking smoke. These instances of inexplicable nightmare are Yovanoff's forte, and they're powerful enough to glide readers past occasional lapses in sense. No one since Francesca Lia Block has so consistently sided with the so-called monsters, and this dark-sparkled effort furthers the author's reputation as one of YA horror's most unique voices.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2014
When Clementine, in a magical coma for years, is awakened, eerie things (grotesquely mutated animals, animated plants, uncanny weather) begin to happen. Clementine must sift through the mysteries of her childhood to figure out what's causing the wild magic. Yovanoff's world-building is sophisticated and precise. Powerful, haunting prose brings to life a world overflowing with wild magic, seething prejudice, and base fear.

(Copyright 2014 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

May 1, 2014
Yovanoff (The Space Between, rev. 1/12; Paper Valentine, rev. 3/13) here weaves a haunting tale of old magic in a changing world. When Clementine was a child, a torch-bearing mob burned out her family; Clementine escaped by virtue of a magical coma that left her hidden, semi-conscious, in her cellar for years. When she's found and awakened, the eerie happenings (grotesquely mutated animals, animated plants, uncanny weather) that led to the mob attack in the first place begin to resurge. As Clementine reacquaints herself with the townsfolk and her remaining "crafty" relatives, she tries to sift through the mysteries of her childhood to figure out what is causing the wild magic. Meanwhile, Clementine's romantic attachment to Fisher, the boy who woke her, shines a spotlight on the divide between the crafty and non-crafty elements of the town, in whose gray spaces Fisher uneasily exists. Yovanoff's world-building is sophisticated and precise, incorporating both the physical presence of the town and its dangers and the conceptual underpinnings of the supernatural in Clementine's universe. Powerful, evocative prose brings to life a world close to overflowing with wild magic, seething prejudice, and base fear. For readers who like their fantasies unsettling and morally tangled; hand this to fans of Laini Taylor and Frances Hardinge. claire e. gross

(Copyright 2014 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)