The May Queen Murders by Sarah Jude

The history of Rowan's Glen is not a pretty one. Legend has it a murderer stalks its woods, screaming out in the night. Pets have begun to disappear and mutilated remains have been discovered in the fields. Some folks are starting to worry that the long unseen Birch Markle has returned. 

Ivy wasn't even born when Birch Markle began his reign of terror. But she's heard all the stories and knows about the death of the Glen's May Queen, their last - until now. And even with the tremor of fear currently running through their community, some believe it's time to bring the tradition back. 

There were a lot of things to love about Sarah Jude's debut. The atmosphere, the pacing, the superstition and folklore base...

Ivy and her cousin are part of a small community that lives outside of town. They attend school with the regular kids, but otherwise don't socialize outside of Rowan's Glen. And Ivy is fine with that. She's happy in the Glen. Her cousin, Heather, wants more. And though they share everything, Ivy soon discovers that Heather is keeping secrets after all.

The book begins with a missing animal. Another in a long string of missing animals considering they've been disappearing for some time. Which of course brings to mind the stories of Birch Markle - the Glen's most infamous resident. Ivy's grandmother shared the tales with both Ivy and Heather as they were growing up. But their grandmother doesn't talk these days.

All of these little details (ok, some not so little) give readers a fabulous understanding of Ivy, her home life, and the community she's part of. They also set the tone for an ominous read. It reminded me in part of The Village, obviously. But the superstitions - both Ivy's mother's and her grandmother's - added a great layer of intrigue to the tale.

It was the end where I felt The May Queen Murders faltered a bit. There's some misdirection that, unfortunately, feels a bit like an afterthought. Honestly, up until that stage I was all on board but I did kind of wish that the book had ended without that little extra bit thrown in.

All things considered, I quite enjoyed The May Queen Murders. It's an overall satisfying and chilling read and Sarah Jude is definitely one I'll be looking forward to reading more from.

Rating: 3.5/5

Pre Pub Book Buzz: The May Queen Murders by Sarah Jude

You may recognize today's title if you had the chance to check out this week's Top Ten Tuesday post. I've talked a bit about my fondness for rural and folk horror, so you probably know that when a book like The May Queen Murders pops up on my radar I'm going to be antsy as all get out to get my hands on a copy.

Rural/folk horror has been for the most part much more popular in British horror. This is understandable considering FolkHorror.com's definition of the sub genre is:

"...horror fiction... characterised by reference to European, pagan traditions. Stories typically involve standing stone circles, earthworks, elaborate rituals or nature deities."

Will Erickson describes it (in part) in his Summer of Sleaze piece on Thomas Tryon as:

...where pagan fertility rituals crash into city slickers with their framed country quilts and adorable folk art museums... a deeper, unspoken fear that these quaint abandoned rituals and declawed traditions might still have a power our plastic world of superhighways and microwave ovens [lack]...

(Do check out the piece, it's highly enlightening and entertaining. I gleefully tracked down an old hardcover copy of Harvest Home as a result even though the good folks at Open Road Media now have that one available as an ebook.)

And while we have historically seen at least a few entries in the sub genre here, Stateside - "Children of the Corn," the work of Thomas Tryon, and such - I'm seriously hoping it's gaining popularity what with recent releases like Kim Liggett's Blood and Salt and Amy Lukavics's Daughters Unto Devils.

And that brings us to Sarah Jude's May Queen Murders. Here's a bit about the book from Goodreads:

Stay on the roads. Don’t enter the woods. Never go out at night.

Those are the rules in Rowan’s Glen, a remote farming community in the Missouri Ozarks where Ivy Templeton’s family has lived for centuries. It’s an old-fashioned way of life, full of superstition and traditions, and sixteen-year-old Ivy loves it. The other kids at school may think the Glen kids are weird, but Ivy doesn’t care—she has her cousin Heather as her best friend. The two girls share everything with each other—or so Ivy thinks. When Heather goes missing after a May Day celebration, Ivy discovers that both her best friend and her beloved hometown are as full of secrets as the woods that surround them.

I. Can't. Wait. Really I can't.

The May Queen Murders is due out (appropriately) in May from HMH books for Young Readers.

(Note, Jude herself is calling this one gothic fiction. I'm addicted to both folk horror and gothic fiction so I'm good either way!)

Material Girls by Elaine Dimopoulos

As the hottest singer out there, Ivy Wilde is a name no one is going to forget any time soon. But now her reign at the top is threatened by a new bright spot in the music industry. Fearing she's destined to become a has been before she's even out of her teens, Ivy begins to take drastic steps.

Marla was lucky to have been tapped for Torro-LeBlanc. Luckier still when she rose to the ranks of the Superior Court. But it looks like her luck may have finally run out when she's demoted - sent to the basement with the drafters. It doesn't take long for the unfairness of it all to really sink in, though, and when that happens Marla finds herself at the center of a revolution.

Elaine Dimopoulos's debut imagines a world where kids are "tapped" at age 12 to become trendsetters for the creative industries. It's a move that was made ostensibly to save the economy and apparently - or we're led to believe - has worked. But it means that those who aren't tapped - like Ivy's own brother - are the only ones who continue their educations and enter the regular workforce. Though these "adequates" are the doctors, scientists, reporters, accountants, etc, so much emphasis is put on the creative industries instead that the adequates are basically the bottom of the barrel.

At first it's an odd premise, and one that we don't get a full explanation on until about halfway through the book. But I do recall a very real story not so terribly long about people who troll college campuses and high schools to see what "the kids are into these days."

Dimopoulos's world isn't rosy and sunshiny, though. And the disappointment isn't felt solely by inadequates either. Marla believes in the system even after she's unfairly demoted. Ivy has every imaginable benefit of this system as well but spends her days popping pills to remain "placid." And once things get set in motion, it becomes very clear that only those at the very top are apparently pleased with the way things have been going.

Material Girls is a fun read. It's dystopian and it's dark, but dark in the way that Kiera Cass's The Selection is dark. Skirting dark, or dark themes bound up in a lighter story than, say, Divergent and Hunger Games. Still, it is thought provoking and probably a bit higher on the I-could-see-this-happening scale than some.

I don't know if this is to be the first in a series - it does work quite well as a stand alone, but I certainly hope we'll get to explore this world more in the future.

Rating: 4/5