Dear friends,

I just finished Sawkill Girls, which I had borrowed from the university library:

A brief synopsis: Sawkill Girls centers around a trio of girls living in a place called Sawkill Island (Sawkill Rock).  Young girls have been mysteriously disappearing over a period of years, and local legend has it that there is some kind of monster lurking in the woods.  So Marion (plain-Jane newcomer to Sawkill), Zoey (daughter of the local policeman), and Val (the beautiful rich girl) team up to locate and destroy this evil before it strikes again.

The author incorporates diversity (Zoey is mixed-race, and there’s some girl / girl romance going on), and is clearly a feminist, but the girl-power message became a little heavy-handed (to me) near the end, when a gathering of community men turn out to have dark motives that only the girls can vanquish.  Females good, males bad (aside from the girls’ friend Grayson, a kind and gentle young man who bakes cookies).

This book has a lot of mixed reviews on Goodreads, and I can understand why readers would have a “love it or hate it” reaction.  For me, it was just ok.  It became a bit of a chore to finish.

First: I don’t think I’m the intended audience for this book.  It’s a YA (“young adult”) tale, and I’d put it in the horror / paranormal genre, which really isn’t my favorite.  So part of my lukewarm reaction is probably tied to those factors.

Beyond that, my main issues with the book were:

The horror / suspense doesn’t build – rather, it’s intense from the start, and stays intense all the way through.  This level of constant danger and violence is unsettling after a while.  I didn’t feel like I got to know the characters as people, beyond the ways they reacted to paranormal threats.

The book is long.  Looooong.  Around 450 pages.  With horror scene after horror scene, in an episodic format (I was going to say, episodic rather than building to a climax, but that wouldn’t be fair, the episodes *do* build to a climax, but often don’t seem to be heading anywhere).  There’s no mystery as to which character is the “villain” (or aiding the villain) – we’re told from the start.

Bottom line: I didn’t care for it, but I can see how fans of the genre might enjoy it.  Give it a try if you enjoy paranormal tales.

Happy reading,

Winnie and the Professor