Recent Irvine, California, high school graduate Edelweiss \u201cEdie\u201d Birch seeks her inheritance: the Hart Creek, Maine, home of her estranged late maternal grandmother, Ludmilla Vovk. The pointy red-and-white structure out in the woods is a character unto itself, not least because it can grow chicken legs and move around like Baba Yaga\u2019s house. Pale, red-haired Edie meets up with her aunt Darya and Darya\u2019s student, Leander. The Vovk family came to America from Ukraine in the 1800s, bringing their \u201cnature worship\u201d traditions with them. They practice magic, including casting an annual spell that protects Hart Creek from menacing goblins. This task now falls on Edie\u2019s shoulders, and she\u2019d much rather offload the responsibility onto someone else. Edie and Leander, who has brown skin and Afro-textured hair, are young adults struggling with the weight of others\u2019 expectations, although Edie\u2019s are rooted in horrifying family secrets. Edie\u2019s growth from passive avoidance to engaged action forms a satisfying character arc. The goblins, often depicted as silhouettes or bright, glaring eyes, turn out to be more than they seem. The color palette\u2019s shifts\u2014green and black during moments of menace and an intense flashback sequence in greens and reds against a black background\u2014provide thrills amid the angst. References to Nathaniel Hawthorne and Stephen King are earned touchstones in Hender\u2019s YA debut. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recent Irvine, California, high school graduate Edelweiss \u201cEdie\u201d Birch seeks her inheritance: the Hart Creek, Maine, home of her estranged late maternal grandmother, Ludmilla Vovk. The pointy red-and-white structure out in the woods is a character unto itself, not least because it can grow chicken legs and move around like Baba Yaga\u2019s house. Pale, red-haired […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6778","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\/6778"}],"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=6778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}