The afterdark

When 18-year-old Evie Laurent's twin sister Ada slips off of a dock and drowns during an argument, Evie is secretly relieved to be free from her torment. Sent to the west coast of Canada to attend elite boarding school Northcroft in Ada's place, Evie looks forward to a fresh start away from the memory of her manipulative and abusive twin. She's excited to learn that one of her dorm mates is Holland Morgan, a famous child actress and Evie's former crush. But even as romantic sparks fly upon their reunion, Evie is unnerved by the strange and sinister undertones of Northcroft: the sundown curfew, the automated blackout blinds, the masked and powerful secret society that runs the school, and the suspicious silence of her father, Principal Blackwood. As Evie investigates, she is forced to reconcile with her inexplicable attraction to the sinister forest surrounding the school and the darkness lurking within herself. While some characters are unevenly developed, Latimer (Escape to Witch City) capably explores violent urges and dangerous obsession in this dark and twisted thriller interspersed with intense and steamy moments of sapphic romance via Evie and Holland's alternating first-person perspectives. Evie and Holland are white. Ages 14--up. Agent: Silvia Molteni, Peters Fraser + Dunlop. (Jan.)

An 18-year-old heads off to school on a mysterious island, but she finds the institution and the nearby forest more sinister than she could have imagined. After her identical twin sister, Ada, drowns, Evie's mom sends her to Northcroft, the school Ada attended. The elite boarding school located on a remote island off the coast of British Columbia was founded by Evie's ancestor, and her absent father is the principal. Upon arriving, Evie runs into TV star Holland, a former classmate and longtime crush--and they share an undeniable attraction. The intensity of their relationship grows even as girls around them go missing. The mysterious disappearances are seemingly linked to the dark, off-limits forest beyond the school's walls and to the Crown and Grave, a secretive, elitist group of legacy students. The forest also appears to be a catalyst for the dark impulses Evie's been feeling for years and which she's having a harder time ignoring. The story's narrative momentum is slow to build, making it difficult to enter the novel's world and connect with the characters. Patient readers will find that the story eventually hits its stride, and the pace quickens in time for a gruesome finale. The queer romantic relationships are highly sexual, although the sex scenes feel unnecessarily redundant, doing little to further the story. Most major characters are coded white. Unevenly paced and overstuffed queer supernatural body horror.(Horror. 14-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.