Aug 11, 2020
Join Mel and Lisa as they discuss the YA horror novel Sawkill Girls, by Claire Legrand.
Following the death of her father in a car accident, Marion Althouse finds herself moving to a new home on Sawkill Island. Her mother, numb with loss, will be the housekeeper for the top family on Sawkill: the Mortimers, a mother and daughter with numerous dark secrets. Marion’s sister Charlotte is eager for a new scene and new friends. While still lost in the throes of grief, Marion has become an anxious caretaker to her remaining family. She just wants a safe place for all three of them to heal. Sawkill isn’t the place for that, however. It doesn’t take long for Charlotte to find new friends, including the boss’s daughter, Val. Then the unthinkable happens: Charlotte disappears. Marion quickly discovers that Sawkill has a terrifying history of disappearing girls, several of whom were friends with Val at the end, and no one really does much to figure out what happened. It turns out that this Island is a temporary home for a monster from another dimension, and this monster needs to eat girls to survive. The Rock of Sawkill isn’t happy about this occupation and needs girls to unite to protect it and its inhabitants. Marion has to negotiate this new community, with its distrust of outsiders and strict class hierarchies, and figure out who are her allies and who are her enemies. It doesn’t take her long to learn that nothing is quite what it seems to be.
Recommended in this podcast: W. Scott Poole's Vampira: Dark
Goddess of Horror, Paul Tremblay's Survivor Song, and
Stephen Graham Jones's The Only Good Indians
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Our social media is @MonsterWrote on Twitter and Instagram. Our email is monsterwrote@gmail.com. This episode was produced and researched by Lisa and Mel. Theme music is “Misconception” by Nicolas Gasparini.