#direwood

[jessicasuniquegiftshop]

Direwood by Nene Thomas

[radicalnature]

Direwood

[rbtbc]

Check out my written review of Direwood by Catherine Yu.

Direwood: A Gothic Tale of Vampires and Mystery | Book Review

https://readingbeyondthebookcover.com/direwood-by-catherine-yu/

[twincitiesgeek]

Direwood Has a Great Premise but Lackluster Execution

This YA debut is another story that doesn't quite live up to the promise of its interesting concept.

Page Street Kids Slow-burn horror is a tricky subgenre to master. When done right, it builds up enough tension to keep the audience invested and doesn’t need to rely on traditional gimmicks, like jump scares or shock value. When done less well, you’re left with maybe a few good ideas that are caught in a net of drawn-out boredom and slight irritation. Catherine Yu’s debut novel, Direwood, has a…

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[publishedtoday]

Direwood - Catherine Yu

In this velvet-clad 1990s gothic horror, Aja encounters a charming vampire who wants to lure her into the woods—just like her missing sister. No one ever pays attention to sixteen-year-old Aja until her perfect older sister Fiona goes missing. In the days leading up to Fiona’s disappearance, Aja notices some extraordinary things: a strange fog rolling through their idyllic suburban town, a brief moment when the sky seems to rain blood, and a host of parasitic caterpillars burrowing their way through the trees. Aja’s father, the neighbors, and even her ex-friend Mary all play down this strange string of occurrences, claiming there must be some natural explanation. It seems everyone is willing to keep living in denial until other teens start to go missing too. Aja is horrified when she meets Padraic, the vampire responsible for all the strange occurrences. His hypnotic voice lures her to the window and tells her everything she’s longed to hear—she’s beautiful and special, and he wants nothing more than for Aja to come with him. Aja knows she shouldn’t trust him, but she’s barely able to resist his enthrallment. And following him into the woods may be the only way to find Fiona, so she agrees on one condition: He must let her leave alive if she is not wooed after one week. Though Aja plans to kill him before the week is out, Padraic has his own secrets as well. In the misty woods, Aja finds that Padraic has made his nest with another vampire in a dilapidated church infested by blood-sucking butterflies. Within its walls, the vampires are waited on and entertained by other children they’ve enthralled, but there is no sign of Fiona. Before her bargain is up, Aja must find a way to turn her classmates against their captors, find her sister, and save them all—or be forced to join the very monsters she wants to destroy.

tw: body horror, death, racism, violence

[litlemonbooks]

Book Tour: Direwood by Catherine Yu

Book Tour: Direwood by Catherine Yu

I am so thankful to have gotten a spot on the Direwood booktour. As a vampire lover, there has never been a book tour more perfect for me. You can check out the full tour here! Summary In this velvet-clad 1990s gothic horror, Aja encournters a charming vampire who wants to lure her into the woods–just like her missing sister. No one ever pays attention to sixteen-year-old Aja until her perfect…

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[direwoodrp]

Direwood’s March prompts put a little Irish on it with Celtic themed prompts.  Best of luck on your prompts!

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[haleofanidea]

Peter Hale: February Moon

Peter kept his humanity in a box that was small and gray and fireproof.  He melted down the key years ago but had mastered the art of picking the lock.  He kept it under the floorboards, under a heavy piece of furniture.  It took work to get to it.

In preparation for the full moon he rolled up the thick full floor rug in his bedroom.  Underneath the floor looked like the inside of a coffin belonging to someone buried alive. It was a wonder his neighbors hadn’t called the cops or that he hadn’t clawed his way down to the sweet flesh of their bellies.  Perhaps even the wolf hated the tedium of moving should it give into to its pangs of hunger.  Last month the moon had turned huge and red as an alpha’s eye and Peter woken up naked in the woods.  The super moon tonight would be rough.

He dressed in his comfortable old Sunday morning clothes and played an old Peter and the Wolf record because he loved irony.  He didn’t think about the feeling of the clawed-up floorboards against the skin of his bare feet or how everything was much louder or that he wanted to tear the apartment building apart, break it into unassembled debris, with the strength of his shoulders.  He didn’t think of the part of his humanity he had locked away in a box.

Inside the box were all the things he couldn’t let go of, but couldn’t risk getting near.  Things he’d extracted from his life like a bullet from a body.  They were artifacts of an autopsy.  The relics of a chance for Peter to be anything other than what he’d become. Peter had always kept hidey holes, most of them hadn’t lasted the years that stretched his change and his madness. Peter had tucked away those things that had survived.  A family bible, a few letters, a couple tomes to magic to burn.  He didn’t just store sentimental items.  There was, of course, twenty thousand dollars.  A little black book of people that if he needed to he could apply a little blackmail or embarrassment.  He wondered sometimes if he had always been a wolf, if he had always had teeth.  He’d always stored things up for the future, now his artifacts lived in the floor like a telltale heart.

He cared for it best by touching it seldom, by trying not to disturb the past until he needed to look again.  The box was where he kept the bird bones of his hope, where he sharpened the knife of his resolve, where he visited his own mausoleum.  The box kept his eyes open and his ears listening and his teeth bright and sharp in the darkness.  

There was still a small place inside him where his goodness lived.  It was bigger than even he wanted to admit to himself, and it grew larger with every second he bored of being alone.  He tired of being the antisocial troublemaker he let everyone believe he was because it was better than admitting he wasn't well.  Admitting how broken he still was would be like admitting that he deserved six years of emptiness and panic.  

He pulled the steak he purchased from the freezer and cooked it just long enough for it to be technically not raw, he ate that one at the table with a chilled beer.  The second he ate from the pan, the third he ate straight from the brown paper with his teeth long and his ears listening for competition.  The wolf knew he shouldn’t be inside, that he shouldn’t be eating someone else’s hunt.  He had a nephew once, too soft for his own good and all those little pups …  He snarled, shook his head.  His claws dug into the meat of his own thigh.  His belly was full and satisfied, but his spirit was anything but.  The wolf always was what it was, territorial, wounded, totally lacking in understanding of the nuances of life.  It wanted to hunt but didn’t want to leave, it burned under its skin and couldn’t fit the pain in its world philosophy.

The world outside was white and cold and waiting.  He stood to go and press himself against the cold glass until he felt himself again.  Felt the binary of pain or not pain with the edges of his nerve ends until he could feel out the edges of himself.  In the end, he washed his dishes and went into his room.

Time drifted away, the wolf wasn’t settling with a nest of old blankets on the floor, it wasn’t satisfied with a full belly and a penthouse to wander.  The full moon was always like a lucid dream, but now it felt more like he was trying to dance underwater.  Peter was too far gone to call anyone, and anyone he would have called probably wouldn’t have even remembered him.  He needed his pack, he needed to find his pack.