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Reviewed by:
  • What the Woods Keep by Katya de Becerra
  • Karen Coats
de Becerra, Katya What the Woods Keep. Imprint, 2018 [352p]
ISBN 978-1-250-12425-8 $17.99
Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9-12

Despite the mysterious disappearance of her mother when she was eight and her father's obsession with Nibelung mythology, Hayden has become a determined skeptic of the paranormal. When she comes into possession of her childhood home in Colorado at eighteen, she seeks answers to her mother's disappearance once and for all. Accompanied by her stalwart roommate, Del, Hayden travels from NYC to Colorado only to find that her father is not as crazy as his colleagues think he is, and that neither she nor her lost mother is as entirely human as she would like to believe. It's unclear, though, whether her Nibelung mother disappeared in the service of good or evil, and what the call of her own Nibelung blood is asking her to do in order to finish her mother's failed work. The split between Hayden's desire for rational explanations and her growing awareness of her paranormal lineage is cleverly handled through chapter starts wherein she relates the accepted scientific theories of the various weird phenomena she and Del experience. Gradually, though, Hayden loses her faith in these theories as mounting evidence blurs the lines between science and myth. In the vein of Westerfeld's Peeps (BCCB 9/05), spooky atmospherics and moral ambiguity complement the blend of science and myth to create a thoughtful and compelling horror fantasy.

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