Rebecca Barrow

A very apt title here. Harlow was continually uprooted by her mother, with only a vague explanation that 'someone' was after them. Everything came to a head the night they were hit by a semi and Mom died, but not before she gave Harlow a key and a cryptic message. The key led her to a safe deposit box with lots of cash and information about a house in a distant town.
Ignoring her late mother's warning not to go there, she buys a car and makes the trip. What she finds is an eerie place deep in show more the woods that looks abandoned, but has electricity and water. If it's been abandoned and unlived in for years, who's been paying the bills? Her gradual understanding of her mom's paranoia, what happened at the house many years ago, and who she really is are what follows in alternating vignettes. Her mom had sisters and a mother that if not evil, was twisted. Harlow's unraveling of all that is at times scary, sometimes insightful, and has one heck of a twist at the end. show less

Bloody, long-lost family quarrels stalk the town with pep in this second entry into the Archie Horror novel canon. Rebecca Barrow's licensed-fiction debut showcases obvious appreciation for the inherently campy and juicy source material, as well as her trademark appreciation for the longings, ambitions, and secrets that make up teen girls' lives. Veronica might be sporting a new set of fangs and a mean right hook, but her thrill ride toward vamp-hood is steeped in carefully-grounding details show more and framed by her relationships to her parents, Archie and Betty, and perhaps most importantly Cheryl.

The vampire has been used as a metaphor for many things, but its efficacy in examining queerness is unparalleled. Queer literature is often synonymous with romance, but Interview with the Vixen is a fine example of a seemingly-light teen book and obvious locus for romance containing not an overt romance plot but a story of tangled friendships, family power dynamics, and personal change that will feel familiar and empowering to many queer readers. The ambition and drive Veronica's spent so much time trying to curate and tame for the sake of her family, friends, and school come roaring out in the wake of her encounter with a powerful vampire--and once bitten, any shyness about what she wants and who she might become are gone, a neat mirror to the metamorphosis queer people often experience around coming out.

Pearl girls gone feral, frenemy team-ups, Archie the Damsel, holy-water swimming pools, high-fashion stakes, and a visit or two to Pop's: Vixen has something for Riverdale fans, Buffy acolytes, and anyone who loves a good spin on the ultimate monster of camp (the vampire) (or possibly Cheryl Blossom...) show less

Dark, hinting at a touch of the supernatural, thanks to the string of girls who have died on Parris Island. It's like a giant uber rich and glamorous trap and Luca feels it more than anyone else, thanks to losing her best friend three years ago. Conflicted, cursed with obsessive thoughts and feeling alienated from almost everyone is how she is when things begin to go terribly sideways. What that involves you'll need to find out for yourself. It's a superb thriller with a dandy ending.

The author’s use of quite short, pacy chapters made it easy to quickly feel drawn into this dark, disturbing and rather haunting story. I enjoyed her early scene-setting of an apparently idyllic island where the majority of its residents enjoy a wealthy, privileged lifestyle which they will go to any lengths to protect. However, through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Luca, who is mixed-race, is struggling with her sexuality and her mental health and has never felt fully accepted in this show more predominantly white community, the reader soon becomes aware of the darkness and secrets which lie just below the surface of this ‘paradise’.
The fact that I’d guessed quite early on who the murderer was didn’t spoil the story for me because right from the start this felt much more like a coming-of-age story than a thriller. I found that the real tension in the storytelling
came from following Luca’s thought-processes as she struggled with her grief about her sister’s death, her unresolved grief and guilt about the death of her best friend Polly three years earlier, her relationship with Naomi, with her parents and with her peer-group. Although it’s clear from the first chapter that Luca is struggling with her mental health, I was impressed by the way in which the author, without being gratuitously explicit, gradually revealed the various issues which her main character was attempting to understand and resolve. However, the fact that I felt I gained so much insight into why Luca behaved and reacted in the ways she did throughout the story did throw into sharp-relief her rather less-nuanced portrayals of the other characters.
The story explores a wide range of disturbing themes, including grief, guilt, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, struggles with identity and self-esteem and the toxic nature of secrets, but it also incorporates the importance of friendship, love, loyalty, trust, forgiveness, and acceptance and how Luca attempts to resolve the tensions between her frequently conflicting and ambivalent emotions. Bearing in mind the novel’s target readership, the ways in which the author so sensitively dealt with some potentially upsetting and disturbing issues always felt entirely age-appropriate.
Whilst I found much of the story psychologically convincing, there were some aspects of it which I felt were less so. It’s difficult to go into any detail without introducing spoilers but not only did I find the ending far from credible, but I also thought that there were too many loose ends relating to relationships which had been central to Luca’s search for answers. This imbalance was a disappointment because I otherwise admired the author’s pacing of her thought-provoking story and her portrayal of such a complex and memorable protagonist.
With thanks to Readers First and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. show less