Mary Downing Hahn

I remember reading books by this author when I was young and I wondered, when I picked this one up, if I would enjoy her writing as much as an adult. Verdict: very much so.

This book is based on an actual event that Downing Hahn experienced when she was a teenager. She does an exceptional job of bringing a life altering moment to a book that doesn’t just entertain readers; it brings them into the minds of each person involved. The author achieves this with alternating chapters from show more different characters’ perspectives.

This novel shows the doubts, uncertainties, and fears that violate death brings to those close to it and to the community at large. It reveals the darker sides of our human nature of herd mentality and how fear can make it fester and grow. It also shows that death, especially the kind these teens experienced, changes people. You cannot go back to the way you were before. Life will never be the same. show less

This book has explicit child sexual abuse of a five-year-old, explicit child sexual abuse of a sixteen-year-old, normalizing of a teacher possibly coercing a student and the teacher waits until the student is eighteen to divorce his wife, clinical narcissistic father, child and teen grooming by a stranger the parents adore, tons of gaslighting and victim blaming, emotional abuse and psychological control, and vampirism is portrayed as rape. The entire book is all of this. "Repeated examples" show more doesn't cover it. Several teenagers were murdered by the child/teen sex abuser, too, but that's framed as "this book has a supernatural mystery element to it." I'm sure there's other stuff I've forgotten as a way to protect myself.

Over the past year or so, I've been rereading books that were a major part of my budding sexuality as a twelve-year-old. I wanted as an adult to know if the books could still sweep me up, if I could have that curiosity, and if the books still held up in terms of being good. This was the final book I remembered, so I'm done with this little experiment.
Every single one of these books contained child or teen sexual abuse, whether explicit or coded, or "she's sixteen so it's fine." I feel gross typing that phrase, but it's the fastest way to describe a few of these books. Many contained supernatural or fantasy elements--I've always had a thing for werewolves, tended to go on vampire kicks too, and was suuuuper intrigued by faeries especially Francesca Lia Block's take. Most of these books have vivid descriptions in them, the settings are rich, the period is so 90s and it makes me smile--these books have good things about them. Many of them have interesting plots and are so well-paced that--it feels really natural.
So I have negative feelings about a lot of them and prepare myself for PTSD meltdowns when I have read them. "I Was A Teenage Fairy" especially caused meltdowns. I just realized many, many of these books have clinically narcissistic parents, usually the mom. That is probably another huge reason I loved them so much: my dad was in them! It was the only place I saw kids with parents like mine, and how evil the parents were seen.

"Look For Me by Moonlight" has one of the most beautiful book covers for me, to this day. I mean the one where she's gazing at fallen leaves while lying in them, not the creepy version I got as an adult that suggests this book is a hot new romance. The new cover isn't creepy if you don't know what the book is about. That unsettles me to realize.
The predator meets his victim when he goes to stay at the inn her parents run.
The first half of this book is framed as a romance. It's through the eyes of a sixteen-year-old, so of course she would think a thirty-year-old's attention on her is romantic, not predatory. Ew. This dude's a vampire through and through--he reads everyone's minds, changes people's moods to force them to calm down and love him, the cat hates him, he pushes his food around on his plate and takes his meals in his room. It's shortly revealed he drinks blood, and subtly hinted at even before then, with him preferring extra rare steaks. And those are examples I remember off the top of my head--if I were to go back, there would be more and subtler ones. The author did a wonderful job integrating well-known vampire qualities into her character.

She does a wonderful, just terrific, job of bringing settings and places alive with little effort. I don't know why I responded to it so eagerly, but I did, instantly. Poetry is freely quoted in the form of a well-known murder ballad, "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes. Other poems are referred to throughout the novel, but this is the heaviest quoted and used as a foreshadowing device to incredibly chilling effect. A huge difference between me at twelve and me at thirty: I first heard Loreena McKennitt's song of "The Highwayman" when I was sixteen or so. It's the poem set to tune, with a few verses cut. The song is still ten minutes long. It's wonderful. And it was the song I heard in my mind as I kept reading. Only this book had me so absorbed, that I imagined a sixteen-year-old girl singing parts of it as a skin-crawling duet with her predator, a man twice her age. In my mind, their voices weren't as stellar as they imagined. I got...really into the book to be that irritated with the characters. And I felt like I understood the girl perfectly. I make completely different decisions and have different emotional--something, but yeah, we have some things in common.

The book opens with her explaining that her parents divorced when she was six because her father left her mother for an eighteen-year-old student. He was her English teacher. Throughout the novel, he prizes his five-year-old son over his sixteen-year-old daughter, snaps at his daughter, ignores her, never once tried to maintain contact, suggests she's stupid, gaslights her, draws attention to himself when he feels not enough is on him, ridicules others for believing in town legends (haunted inn and murdered teens)...Hi, Dad. And hi again, Dad: Mom -was- eighteen when you met. She had me a year later. (stare down)
Not related to my dad: every time Book Dad was on the page, I shouted, "Susan was your student, you g-ddamn weirdo! You're gross!" I could not get past that. I do not intend to. He's so gross.
.
The dad pissed me off, but oooh, let's get to the stepmother.
She clearly doesn't want her husband's daughter there. From the second day, Susan puts her to work right away, in tasks big and small. They're incessant. Susan constantly criticizes the teen and spoils the little kid. There's other indications that she herself may be a clinical narcissist. Couples can both be narcissists. When I first read this, I thought Susan was hugely pregnant and couldn't move around quickly. On second read, she's barely showing. So she's bossing around a strange teenager for no reason other than a power trip. If...I didn't know better, I'd...wonder if Susan considered the teen a romantic rival.
This book is gross.
But there's that vibe, and I can't shake it.

The ultimate moment that I flat-out and utterly hated Susan and wanted horrible things to happen to her: Susan uses her body to block the teen from going to her room as they're arguing about the vampire. "I can see him if I want to!" type thing. "You married my dad when you were eighteen!" the teen yells (I'm paraphrasing). "That was an entirely different situation!" Susan yells.
I shouted a lot of foul, hateful things when I read that.
IT WAS THE EXACT SAME SITUATION, YOU HORRIBLE (long stream of censored words). What's the difference? Laaahuuuvveee? Newsflash: you married your rapist and have stayed with him for ten years. It's not love. I hate you, Susan, for treating your husband's daughter with such hypocrisy and I hope horrible things happen to you.

Nowhere in the novel does anyone stop to wonder why Vincent, the vampire, isn't interested in women his age. -Every- -single- -blame- is at the teen. She's all but called a harlot, and really is accused repeatedly of seducing an adult male. She sees it as absolute love until she realizes she's being brainwashed and literally cannot say no.

The five-year-old is an enormous brat and I hated every second he was on the page..
Even when the book unquestionably turns into a horror novel halfway through and the little boy is being abused by Vincent, I still hated him. I just hated them both. I didn't blame the little kid or anything, but that doesn't mean I liked him.
The rivalry between a young child and a vulnerable teenager developed as they battled first for their parents' attention, then for a vampire to abuse them. It was upsetting in a variety of ways. This book was too realistic, and I hated that. I just--and yet, I wanted to read a -normal- book by this author because she's so skilled.

The teenager hits all the areas a kid at risk for abuse would. Noted without a scrap of judgment, meant as praise (ew) that the author was so thorough (ew). Her insecurities and worries echo mine as an adult and were unquestionably mine as a tween. She's constantly called childish and selfish for feeling this way. I guess I'm still childish and selfish. (shrug) Not like I've been in therapy for years or anything and am trying to change but the emotions are there. Hm.

There is a healthy love interest named Will. He helps save the day in a way that delighted me, but it was something melodramatic. This book requires splashes of high melodrama, though. Otherwise it's a spine-chilling, skin-crawling, dead-on portrayal of sex abuse.
Another nice thing about reading this: it made me want to write again. I want to write as vividly and draw attention to unusual combinations as the author does (a haunted inn on a lake in the winter. Usually that'd be the summer). Gonna get started. show less

I enjoyed this one a lot. I've only read one other by this author (The Old Willis Place) but I enjoyed it when it didn't terrify the pants off me. Reading this at probably twice that age did have an effect on how I viewed this story. Hahn has a real skill with the written word, she makes the story flow beautifully, and it's excellently paced. I was never bored with it. The characters do feel like real people to me, probably enhanced by the fact that some of them were real annoying at times. show more The protagonist can come off as a bit whiny at times, but that's pretty normal teenage behavior.

That being said, I can understand why some people might be put off with it in this day and age. It has, after all, been two decades since its publication. There are definitely some things glossed over with the dad and stepmom that would fly a lot less nowadays, and for good reason. Honestly though, I do think that this is an excellent book for kids coming up on an age where this kind of grooming is more likely. Supernatural moments aside, the portrayal of the insidious turning of behavior, of how much control Vincent managed to gain, is very real. This is a good book to show how that can happen, and what to watch out for. show less

Ok listen, from the perspective of an almost forty year old, this book is not superb literature. The parents are funky and way out of touch, Heather is a super brat, Molly and Michael are the only ones remotely with it, and everything wraps up hunky-dory in 90 minutes worth of speed reading. BUT...of all the thousands of books I read between three years old and my senior year of high school, this is one that made a huge impression on me. I can't count the number of times I read it and it show more still freaks me right out. This book helped me win Battle of the Books at the city level in the 5th grade. I've gotta give it 5 stars--for nostalgia, for fifth grade, for West Park Elementary School in Hermiston, Oregon, and for poor, long-suffering heroine Molly. show less