Publishers Weekly
07/18/2022
Living in Eastport, Mass., the country’s “most cursed city,” is like celebrating Halloween every day, but 12-year-old narrator Mallory Denton, an aspiring travel photographer, doesn’t enjoy the unending festivities. Transplanted from Chicago, she struggles to adjust to the “quaint, yet foreboding” town, which revels in its supernatural reputation, hosting monthly parades, boasting shops filled with ghoulish garb, and celebrating the beloved 200-year-old legend of Molly Flanders McMulligan Marshall. Known as Sweet Molly, the resident cursed Eastport after her brother, a fishing boat captain, died at sea during a dangerous storm. While Mallory’s parents embrace the town’s macabre history, serving gravestone-shaped pancakes at their purportedly haunted, cemetery-adjacent restaurant, the tween endures nightmares of a frightening hag intent on harming her. As the October anniversary of Sweet Molly’s curse nears, Mallory’s constant nightmares take a turn when a wild-eyed woman appears, determined to unleash her wrath upon the town at whose insistence Sweet Molly’s brother set sail. Told through Mallory’s resolute first-person voice, Currie’s (What Lives in the Woods) middle grade debut brims with tension, spine-tingling terror, and convincing characters bravely facing a supernatural dilemma. Characters cue as white. Ages 8–12. Agent: Shannon Hassan, Marsal Lyon Literary. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"In tense, fast-paced chapters, Currie concocts a chilling setting replete with haunting spectral scares... chillingly rendered." — Kirkus Reviews
"A satisfying spooky selection... would recommend this to kids... looking for a Goosebumps-style read." — Youth Services Book Review
"Charming and chilling in equal measure, I absolutely fell in love with Mallory and with the mist and the ghosts of Eastport." — Katherine Arden, New York Times Bestselling author of the Winternight Trilogy and the Small Spaces Quartet
"Currie’s middle grade novel brims with tension, spine-tingling terror, and convincing characters bravely facing a supernatural dilemma." — Publishers Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
2022-06-22
A recent transplant wrestles with her seaside town’s complicated and ghostly history.
Twelve-year-old Mallory Denton has moved from Chicago to a tiny New England town. Eastport, Massachusetts, is a popular tourist destination, relying on its long and spooky history to keep its economy thriving. Its attractions include Mallory’s parents’ creepily themed restaurant that abuts a cemetery. Sweet Molly’s is Eastport’s most famous story, commemorated as the chief attraction in an annual parade. The legend tells of the time Molly Flanders McMulligan Marshall lost her twin brother, Liam, at sea when the townspeople pressured him to go out in his fishing boat even as a dangerous storm approached. After Mallory begins to see Molly in visions and nightmares, she must find a way to break Molly’s curse on the town before the vengeful ghost can exact her furious otherworldly revenge on the town that monetizes and celebrates her trauma. In tense, fast-paced chapters, Currie concocts a chilling setting replete with haunting spectral scares set in a town with an accessible but intriguingly complicated history. However, the thrills ultimately fizzle, as much is told rather than shown and pivotal plot points are revealed too soon and resolved too quickly and tidily. While some scenes are chillingly rendered, they lose their panache when juxtaposed against moments of cloying predictability. Most characters read as White.
Atmospheric but at times frustratingly flat. (Horror. 8-12)
