Review: Sawkill Girls

Title: Sawkill Girls
Author: Claire Legrand
Genre: Young Adult, Horror, Fantasy
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Source: Library
Format: Ebook
Release Date: October 2, 2018
Rating: ★★★

Goodreads Synopsis:

Beware of the woods and the dark, dank deep. He’ll follow you home, and he won’t let you sleep.

Who are the Sawkill Girls?

Marion: the new girl. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Weighed down by tragedy and hungry for love she’s sure she’ll never find.

Zoey: the pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Maybe she’s broken—or maybe everyone else is.

Val: the queen bee. Gorgeous and privileged, ruthless and regal. Words like silk and eyes like knives, a heart made of secrets and a mouth full of lies.

Their stories come together on the island of Sawkill Rock, where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires.

Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight… until now.

Review:

Zoey has lived in Sawkill with her father, the police chief, for a couple of years. Marion has just moved there, when she has an accident and falls off a horse. Val, a popular girl who Zoey has never trusted, helps Marion recover. Girls have disappeared from Sawkill for decades, without a trace. Zoey’s best friend disappeared after becoming friends with Val, so Zoey thinks that Val is involved in the disappearances. When more girls disappear, and Zoey starts finding strange things around her house, she decides that she must end this cycle of missing girls.

This story followed the points of view of Zoey, Val, and Marion. Zoey was fairly new to the town, only moving there a couple of years before. Marion was a newcomer to the town, but Val’s family had lived there for generations. The town itself was a character as well, with an extensive history.

The story started out as a horror/thriller, with girls going missing. The last half of the story turned more science fiction and fantasy. I didn’t like this twist in the story, because it didn’t seem realistic. At first, it was creepy because it seemed like something that could happen in a small town. I was disappointed in this second half and the ending of the story, because it wasn’t what I expected.

Unfortunately, Sawkill Girls didn’t live up to my expectations.

What to read next:

Have you read Sawkill Girls? What did you think of it?