Language: R (100+ swears, 10 ‘f’); Mature Content: PG-13 (passionate kissing, over clothes touching); Violence: R (hangings, fire deaths, lynchings, drownings all mentioned)
BUYING ADVISORY: HS - NOT RECOMMENDED
Kidnapped as a toddler, 16yo Camryn (or Naomi, as she thinks of herself) has been restored to her birth family for 18 months. She still, however, yearns for the life and the woman that she calls Mom - the woman who kidnapped and raised her. In an effort of family bonding, the Stoakes family heads to a winter cabin vacation outside a small Virginia town. THe town, however, has a recent history of being a “sundown” town - where black people like Naomi and her family were not allowed to stay after dark - found within the town limits and you will get what is coming to you. Naomi has started seeing a ghost and she is sure it is of a girl who was killed by a townsman. Plus, two other girls have disappeared recently. Naomi has already been kidnapped once.
I was unimpressed for many reasons. Camryn is an unsympathetic character. She has had 18 months to realize that her kidnapper is not the benevolent mom that they posed as, but she refuses to work with her therapist to sort this all out. Camryn even writes in her journal to her absent Mom. Plus she insists on throwing herself into increasingly dangerous confrontations, even willfully involving a boy she met on the trip without his consent. I sympathize more with Camryn’s birth family, who have been nothing but kind to her. It shouldn’t take a near death experience for anyone to realize when they are being shown love. There are other problems that I won’t continue to detail.
Cindy, Middle School Librarian, MLS
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