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The Kids Are NOT Alright

Davona Mapp

The dark silhouette of a young woman with long hair, orange butterflies in her hair, The Dark We Know titled over her back. A greyish blue background with a dark mountain and lava or blood dripping down the side of it.

From Net Galley


From Gillian Flynn Books, a lyrical YA horror by debut author Wen-yi Lee that’s perfect for fans of She Is a Haunting, Stephen King’s IT, and The Haunting of Hill House.
Art student Isadora Chang swore never to return to Slater. Growing up, Isa never felt at ease in the repressive former mining town, even before she realized she was bisexual—but after the deaths of two of her childhood friends, Slater went from feeling claustrophobic to suffocating. Isa took off before the town could swallow her, too, even though it meant leaving behind everything she knew, including her last surviving friend Mason.
When Isa’s abusive father kicks the bucket, she agrees to come back just long enough to collect the inheritance. But then Mason, son of the local medium, turns up at the cemetery with a revelation and a plea: their friends were murdered by a supernatural entity, and he needs Isa to help stop the evil—before it takes anyone else.
When Isa begins to hear strange songs on the wind, and eerie artwork fills her sketchbook that she can’t recall drawing, she’s forced to stop running and confront her past. Because something is waiting in the shadows of Slater’s valleys, something that feeds on the pain and heartbreak of its children. Whatever it is, it knows Isa’s back… and it won’t let her escape twice.

Beyond slate, stone, and ginseng, The Dark We Know is a compelling debut that discusses grief, abuse, and sexual identity with open eyes and raw emotion. Its diverse characters are relatable and real, and I'm excited for all of the lives this story will touch.


This book is told from the perspective of Isadora, our sardonic, Bi, artistic protagonist whose bitter homecoming in the wake of her abusive father's death opens the door to the dark secrets of Slater. In this town where young people have been dying for generations, we're introduced to the people and the pain that Isa left behind when she escaped to a prestigious art school. This includes Mason, the only remaining living member of her childhood friend group. The one who stayed. The one who had to live in the miasma of pain and darkness that shrouds their small, suffocatingly religious town.





Isa's tension with Mason, as with almost everyone else in Slater, is wrought with loss and guilt. But Mason is more concerned about their missing classmate, Paige Vandersteen. He's too focused on finding her and learning what really happened to their dead friends to hold a grudge over his feelings of abandonment. Mason's tunnel vision allowed the reader to remain keyed in on Isa's emotions and I think that was a good choice for readers. There were so many turbulent feelings from the outside--her abused mother, her older sister Trish trying to hold their family together, the judgemental Pastor, and the grieving families of her lost friends. It would've been easy to get lost in any other emotional thread. Lee did a wonderful job at keeping the story on task.


Lee gives us a melancholic world to imagine all of this suffering taking place in. Slater is gray and misty and dark--it is winter. With its shadowy places steeped in pain and death and absence, it only made sense that such a hard landscape could birth such horrors. Lee's vivid descriptions of the quarry, the plague house, the grotto, the purple house, the woods give life the death-heavy spaces.





The complexity of relationships, of different kinds of love, is woven so deeply in this book, it reaches into the darkest parts of the story. Isa's interactions with her mother are strained from all their trauma and Isa's resentment. Her love for her sister, despite her bribing Isa to come home, is the closest thing to normal that she has. Even when she feels like her mother and sister are bonded in a way she can't understand, the trust she instills in Trish is never questioned. It's a comfort as a reader to know that love can exist through roots sown in heartache.


My favorite part of this entire book is the way the queer characters are taken care of in the midst of such a religion-heavy setting. There are no slurs. No obvious homophobia on page, save for one very brief incident. The fears of the characters are addressed in honest and vulnerable ways. They discuss their identities on page, when comfortable and authentic. There's even a moment when one of the characters is dead named, but we the reader, never learn what the old name was. This careful, loving, approach means so much to me as a member of the queer community. I'm sure it will mean as much to other members, young and old. Wen-yi Lee cradled her queer babies, all while torturing them with other concerns.


Like a disembodied and mesmerizing song haunting their minds. And discovering dead bodies. And darkly grotesque visions.


In the vein of The Haunting of Hill House Isa's homecoming is riddled with painful memories and an evil she tried to forget, but it never forgot her. An evil that uses its victims' greatest wounds to prey on them and claim their lives, like Pennywise in IT. Hill House being one of my favorite horror productions of all time, I absolutely loved the horror in The Dark We Know. Its power stretched its claws over Slater and into my mind. I will remember its touch for years to come.




"come home Nell" image from The Haunting of Hill House


In the end, this book is a beautiful defense of what makes life worth living. Worth surviving. It's threaded with a frayed cord of self-acceptance, forgiveness, and a bolstering representation of queer identities. This is a beautiful book with a powerful message. Keep going.




Nellie from The Haunting of Hill House captioned with "The rest is confetti."


I recommend this book to the horror lovers with heart! The readers who understand that grief isn't the only thing at the end of loss. For any scary-season-loving teen who wants something eerie to read this October! And for my fellow queer horror fans. This one is for us!


The Dark We Know is available for purchase now!

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