A Dark and Starless Forest

by Sarah Hollowell

Overview

In this "stunning and atmospheric"* contemporary fantasy and 2022 Locus Award Top Ten Finalist, when her siblings start to go missing, a girl must confront the dark thing that lives in the forest—and the growing darkness in herself. (*Buzzfeed)

Derry and her eight siblings live in an isolated house by the lake, separated from the rest of the world by an eerie and menacing forest. Frank, the man who raised them after their families abandoned them, says it’s for their own good. After all, the world isn’t safe for people with magic. And Derry feels safe—most of the time.

Until the night her eldest sister disappears. Jane and Derry swore to each other that they’d never go into the forest, not after their last trip ended in blood, but Derry is sure she saw Jane walk into the trees. When another sibling goes missing and Frank’s true colors start to show, feeling safe is no longer an option. Derry will risk anything to protect the family she has left. Even if that means returning to the forest that has started calling to Derry in her missing siblings’ voices.

As Derry spends more time amidst the trees, her magic grows more powerful . . . and so does the darkness inside her, the viciousness she wants to pretend doesn’t exist. But saving her siblings from the forest and from Frank might mean embracing the darkness. And that just might be the most dangerous thing of all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780358424963
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/14/2021
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	9 MB
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Sarah Hollowell is a queer, fat Hoosier writer aiming to up the magic quotient of Indiana. She spends an awful lot of her nonwriting time listening to podcasts, needle felting cryptids, and replaying the same five video games.

Editorial Reviews

07/26/2021

Flower magic and eerie disappearances mask the characters’ struggles with sadistic child abuse and secrets in Hollowell’s unevenly paced horror debut. Alchemist Derry, 16, and her eight foster siblings were all abandoned to controlling guardian Frank because of the magic each can do. But their austere life of constant surveillance, training, and overprotection in Frank’s Indiana lake house fragments after Derry, who is fat and white, and Jane, who is neurodiverse and Black, witness something unspeakable in the forbidden, shadow-haunted forest—and Jane vanishes. Haunted by Jane’s pleading voice, Derry forms a tenuous alliance with a shadowy girl in the woods who teaches her to unleash her power. But when more of her siblings disappear, Derry must help liberate them all from a terrible fate. Despite an intersectionally inclusive cast and solid prose, the plot bogs down in overexplained conflict and brutal, abrupt escalations into torture, gaslighting, and violence. Seasoned revenge horror readers, however, may enjoy this macabre showdown. Ages 12–up. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Hollowell’s debut is an absorbing tale of magic and horror, bravery and family. [...] Readers looking for a novel in which revenge is sweet will want to read this."
— Booklist Online

From the Publisher

09/01/2021

Gr 7 Up—Derry lives in a secluded house in the woods with her siblings and their protector, Frank. White, fat, 16-year-old Derry and her siblings fear Frank even as he reminds them that he took them in when no one—not even their parents—wanted them because of their magic. Derry and her siblings—eldest Jane (who is Black); Winnie (who is fat and white); Brooke (fat, Deaf, Mexican American); white twins Elle and Irene (Irene is trans); nonbinary, Mexican American Violet; and the youngest, identical Black twins Olivia and London—have fierce bonds among them. When two of them disappear, their protector blames the dense forest surrounding their home. As Derry learns more about him and her own magical affinity for growing real and imagined plants, Derry will have to decide how far she is willing to go to keep her loved ones safe. Despite each sibling having distinct magical abilities, this element of the story is largely set dressing for a blend of horror and suspense. The first-person narration amplifies the siblings' isolation with a palpable fear of Frank and his punishments. Hollowell goes above and beyond to create an inclusive cast with some elements integrated into the narrative better than others (everyone's use of ASL—designated by single quotes around signed dialogue—to communicate with Brooke). Derry's quest to find her missing siblings and save all of them from Frank drives the story but leaves little room for character development of the other siblings who are often absent from the action and remain little more than names and attributes. Derry's moral ambiguity is unresolved by the end of the story along with questions about worldbuilding and what will come next for all of the siblings. VERDICT A dark, inclusive blend of horror and extremely light fantasy. Recommended for collections where horror is popular.—Emma Carbone, Brooklyn P.L.

School Library Journal

2021-07-28
This girl will do whatever she can to protect her family.

Derry, 16, is one of nine young people living in an isolated lake house in Indiana. Each has unique abilities that qualify them as alchemists; Derry can grow and manipulate plants, even imagined ones. Their guardian, a middle-aged nonmagical White man called Frank, monitors their powers’ progress and sets strict rules to protect them, including not going outside without permission, especially not into the nearby forest. But danger has come to this found family. One by one, older sisters disappear without a trace, while the remaining sisters and their nonbinary sibling question their safety within the house. Following disembodied voices, Derry ventures into the forest alone at night to try to discover what happened to her sisters and maybe learn more about her powers, her home, and herself. Hollowell builds a magical atmosphere with ominous, spooky overtones. There is a good variety of identity representations among the family members, and the bonds among these adopted siblings are adamantine. The siblings have diverse body types and all function with anxiety and depression. One sister is Deaf, so some dialogue is signed. Bespectacled Derry is White and fat, while her siblings are White, Black, and Mexican American as well as queer. However, several references to the wendigo outside an Indigenous context are unfortunate. Heavy themes of mental and emotional abuse and some graphic violence make this an intense read.

An otherworldly showing of inner strength. (Fantasy. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews