Mina Murray lives with her yoga teacher mother in London, Georgia, a touristy town built around an impressive mythology of vampires, human sacrifice, and a snake-filled lake. With best friend Jackie Seward, she creates the Lore Club to investigate London\u2019s idiosyncrasies. The club members discover a pattern of sinkholes appearing before people go missing. Mina awakens the morning after a new sinkhole opens up with a strange bite mark on her wrist. When the body of a local resident is found drained of blood and classmate Buddy Swales goes missing, the Lore Club, plus Mina\u2019s love interest, Jonathan Harker, must uncover London\u2019s secrets in time to save Buddy\u2014and the town itself. Mina has OCD and is adopted; she grapples with and explores both aspects of her identity through therapy and in her relationships with family and friends. Unfortunately, the pacing in Dale\u2019s young readers\u2019 debut is sluggish throughout the first two-thirds, making the later, more exciting chapters feel rushed. The romance between Mina and Jonathan smolders, and the plot threads are satisfyingly wrapped up, although the ending hints at more adventures. An obvious nod to Bram Stoker\u2019s seminal work, this novel has engaging facets but falters thanks to uneven execution. Jackie is Black and Indian American and has ADHD, and white-presenting Mina\u2019s friend group is broadly diverse.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mina Murray lives with her yoga teacher mother in London, Georgia, a touristy town built around an impressive mythology of vampires, human sacrifice, and a snake-filled lake. With best friend Jackie Seward, she creates the Lore Club to investigate London\u2019s idiosyncrasies. The club members discover a pattern of sinkholes appearing before people go missing. Mina […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}