Extasia
Author(s): Claire Legrand
**One of BuzzFeed's Great LGBTQ+ YA novels to Warm up Your Winter * A Kid's Feb/March IndieNext pick**
From New York Times bestselling author Claire Legrand comes a new, bone-chilling YA horror novel about a girl who joins a coven to root out a vicious evil that’s stalking her village. Perfect for fans of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Grace Year.
Her name is unimportant.
All you must know is that today she will become one of the four saints of Haven. The elders will mark her and place the red hood on her head. With her sisters, she will stand against the evil power that lives beneath the black mountain—an evil which has already killed nine of her village’s men.
She will tell no one of the white-eyed beasts that follow her. Or the faceless gray women tall as houses. Or the girls she saw kissing in the elm grove.
Today she will be a saint of Haven. She will rid her family of her mother’s shame at last and save her people from destruction. She is not afraid. Are you?
This searing and lyrically written novel by the critically acclaimed author of Sawkill Girls beckons readers to follow its fierce heroine into a world filled with secrets and blood—where the truth is buried in lies and a devastating power waits, seething, for someone brave enough to use it.
Review(s):
“The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Craft. Readers will be riveted by Legrand’s fierce female characters and their harrowing emotional journey.”
"Legrand successfully brings a supernatural gruesomeness to her exploration of morality and agency."
"Slow-burn horror meets a queer coming-of-age story, with compassionately explored themes of feminism, grief, trauma, faith, and abuse. A YA fantasy complement to Naomi Alderman’s The Power; fans of Legrand will find this an interesting new approach, as will readers of Rory Power and House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland."
"Legrand crafts a fiercely unsubtle feminist fantasy that takes on the patriarchy and the toxicity of hate."
“Entertaining.”
Praise for Sawkill Girls: ★“Through this dank, atmospheric, and genuinely frightening narrative, Legrand weaves powerful threads about the dangerous journey of growing up female…an intensely character-driven story about girls who support each other, girls who betray each other, and girls who love each other in many complicated ways. Strange, eerie, and unforgettable.”
★“Legrand’s lush and pensive prose matches the murky, dangerous, and beautiful island setting.... Rich and earthy horror.”
★“This atmospheric, Gothic-flavored chiller, which mingles elements of dark fairy tales and outright horror... includes an asexual character and a beautifully wrought queer romance, [and] focuses on the power of female friendship and what it means to pit women against one another in fiction and in life.”
★”Cinematically, gorgeously creepy and horrific, sliding between breathlessly suspenseful and disturbingly grotesque.”
★”Legrand accomplishes the kind of slow-building tension and mounting horror that will give readers night terrors. Read this book, then lock it in the freezer.”
ISBN: 9780062696632