Nightingale

July 1, 2018

Gr 9 Up-Seventeen-year-old June Hardie is not your stereotypical girl from the 1950s. She's independent, witty, sarcastic, and unconcerned about appearances. She writes her own sci-fic novels-much to the disapproval of her doting housewife mother and stern father. June cannot wait to get out of the house and be on her own, but one morning, she wakes up to discover that something about her parents is off. June becomes convinced that her parents have been replaced by aliens and when she protests, her "parents" have her committed to Burrow Place Asylum-a nightmarish institution for young women who never come out. As she struggles to discover what happened to her parents, June must contend with beastly nurses and horrific hallucinations just to survive. Lukavics continues her trend of deeply unsettling horror fiction for teens, but fails to reach the heights of her previous novels. This one suffers from nonexistent character development, wooden dialogue, a shortage of genuinely scary moments, and a general lack of cohesion. The narrative alternates between June's present life in the asylum and her previous life before she was committed, but instead of being intrigued as to how June came to be there and what actually happened to her parents, readers are left frustrated and confused by the unfocused story line. VERDICT What could have been an excellent commentary on feminism and the faults of America's mental health system wrapped up in a horror novel is instead something that feels unfinished. Skip it.-Tyler Hixson, Brooklyn Public Library

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2018
A troubled young woman is confined to a sinister hospital in this horror story set in 1951 suburbia.As the novel opens, June finds herself rooming with Eleanor, a girl who claims to be dead, at an institution staffed by eerily cheerful, monstrous nurses. June was admitted there following an incident in which she believed her parents had been replaced by imposters. Her home life has long been far from ideal, with June struggling mightily against her family's gender normative expectations that she will one day happily marry and keep house. Alternating between June's often grisly and drug-induced nightmares at the institution and chapters that recount the months leading up to her confinement, a somewhat compelling but muddled tale is slowly spun out that raises the ongoing question of whether June is mentally ill or is in actuality being menaced by otherworldly creatures. Gory descriptions of young women being tortured by procedures such as lobotomies and electroshock therapy echo some of the medical establishment's most shameful history but seem to be played for their impact. A sweetly realistic romantic and sexual relationship blooms between June and Eleanor. The book follows a white default.While meditating on a variety of interesting themes and featuring some genuinely disturbing scares, in the end this novel's parts are more successful than its whole. (Horror. 14-18)

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August 1, 2018
Grades 10-1 Set in 1951, Lukavics' unsettling horror novel pits an iconoclastic young woman suffocated at home against a sinister presence that may or may not be real. Seventeen-year-old June is horrified by her parents' grooming of her to be a subservient wife. Her only escape is the book she's writing, a dark alien-abduction story about a girl subjected to grisly experiments. Her character's suffering is so vivid that June sometimes worries it's not fiction. After a terrible argument with her parents, June suffers a mental break?or so she's told at Burrow Place Asylum. There June meets others consumed by special talents and becomes convinced that the gleefully cruel staff are not trying to heal their patients, but glean information from them. Lukavics blurs the line between mental instability and otherworldly horror well, creating a dread-laden atmosphere punctuated by visceral descriptions of torture. June's homelife is horrific, too, and her heartbreak over her lost future will arouse sympathy. The shocking, unconventional ending will be divisive, but its self-assurance is admirable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)