Revel by Maurissa Guibord (review)

After getting kicked out of yet another foster home, seventeen-year-old Delia decides to make her way to the tiny East Coast island of Trespass, the childhood home of her late mother. Disconnected from the modern world, Trespass is a place of history and tradition, and its people don’t take kindly to strangers, a fact that Delia discovers upon her arival. Seeking to learn more about the place her mother spoke about only in whispers, she stumbles on the town’s connection to a race of mythical sea creatures and the shocking price the residents of Trespass are forced to pay to keep their island safe. Narrator Delia is an appealingly odd mix of grief-stricken orphan and smart-aleck teen. Her desperation to find a link to her mother makes her acceptance of the monsters—both supernatural and human—that inhabit Trespass completely understandable; her feisty nature keeps her from accepting the status quo, though, and her wisecracking attitude in the face of authority will endear her to plenty of teens. Guibord immerses the reader in the mist-shrouded world of Trespass so thoroughly that monsters seem like logical residents, and the creatures themselves—the haughty but vulnerable demigods, the terrifying, crablike Glaucos, the octopus-like oracle, and the soul-sucking demon Icers—give the book a frisson of true horror. The love triangle between Delia, a handsome Trespass resident, and a sea demigod is a bit predictable, but it also emphasizes the terrible burden that has been put upon the youth of Trespass and underlines the town’s sacrifice for security. Readers will be left wondering exactly who the real monsters of Trespass are long after they’ve left its salty, windswept shores.