Fiendish

Want creepy? Want Southern Gothic with a paranormal twist? Read this book and get both. Clementine has been hidden away in the cellar under what remains of her house. She's held by willow roots and floats in a dream state, aware of subtle sounds and movement around her. She's been there for years, ever since someone took her there during what was called The Reckoning, a time when townspeople went crazy and torched homes of those they thought were involved in the Craft. When a strange boy named Fisher frees her, she discovers it's been years since that insane night. Her home is destroyed, her mother dead and her favorite aunt wanders about in a haze, unable or unwilling to recognize her.
Clementine struggles to adjust with the help of show more her cousin Shiny who also possesses the power townspeople refer to as the Craft. Shiny tries to warn her off Fisher, but the attraction between the two is too powerful. They, along with Rae, a black girl who wasn't targeted during the Reckoning, Fisher and Davenport, the sad daughter of a really crazy and dangerous man, make up a group Fisher's grandmother says matches a surreal star painting that hangs in town. When they all become aware of their connection, the Craft in a scary area known as the Hollow, starts coming to life again and the teens must find a way to get things back to normal (or as normal as things can get when you live in a really creepy and unstable place).
How they survive makes for a really gripping read. There's violence and creepiness aplenty, so I wouldn't suggest this for younger teens. YA readers who like industrial strength strange with some very interesting characters will really like this book. show less

Fiendish by Brenna Yovanoff is not your typical young adult fantasy tale. It is dark, brooding, and within its prose lies a deep and sad understanding of society at large. That is probably why I love these stories so much.

Clementine DeVore is a young girl, trapped in a cellar, tied up by roots as the years have passed. She has been down in the cellar of her abandoned home for ten years. Forgotten and deserted. But now she has been found by the only one who can feel her. Fisher can hear the soft heartbeat in the old vacant home. The one that was burned down so many years ago. He hears the heartbeat and it calls to him. He frees Clementine, but he knows her appearance will only tear at the fragile threads that hold his small town show more together. New South Bend is a small town with many secrets. The peace between the people of the town and the people of the Willows has been broken by a murderous violence before. Fear and prejudice drives the townspeople, and the magic of the few remaining people of the Willows, the few who are called the fiendish are what separate them. Clementine was hidden long ago and now that she has returned strange happenings are beginning again. Is it Clementine? Is it the creatures who live just beyond? Or is it the past returning to repeat itself. Why was Clementine, as a small child, buried deep in the cellar and by who? Clementine must find out just what happened all those years ago during the time known as the reckoning. Before it happens again.

Fiendish is clever and powerful writing. The setting is a small town on the cusp of another world, where dangerous and magical creatures exist. But when terrible things begin to happen, the townspeople turn on those that are different with deadly and bloody results. We have seen this played out through history as the one who is different, is always blamed for what is happening by a populace who just doesn't understand what is happening around them.

Brenna Yovanoff does not write cutesy happily ever after stories of fairies and elves and lucky charms. Her creatures are a throwback to the original tales of the Brother's Grimm and we should all be thankful of that.

The main character of Clementine DeVore is original and well rounded. A young girl who returns after a decade of being buried in her family home. A home that was burned down and her mother murdered. You can even forgive the obvious teen romance aspect of the book as Clementine and Fisher are pre-ordained to be drawn to one another by the spells of another.

What is so terrific in this novel is the intricately woven back story to the reckoning and why Clementine was buried by her own family and what really drives this second reckoning that threatens her and what remains of her kind. I won't tell you about that, it is a plot that has to be read to be enjoyed. And that is what separates Fiendish from so many young adult fantasy books, it actually has a plot. Not the standard, cookie cutter, YA book about a young girl who saves everyone and gets a boyfriend too because he is just so cute!

A very good read! show less

I was just expecting a fun book. But instead I got a thick plot, interesting characters, and a magic system that was both fun and terrifying. Clementine is a good main character, she is full of hope, she does not stop trying to help those around her, and she wants the truth. The magic system is so weird, fun, and a little scary. Clementine does not really have much power herself but she makes everyone else around her much more powerful than before. The mystery of what happened is very drawing. The Fiends are really the best part, in my opinion. They are like what the original stories about the Fae are. They are more than a human can really understand. The people from New South Bend act the real people would. Something weird is going on, show more it's their fault. The reckoning at the end of the book is very tense but really great scene. Yovanoff has a good hand with weird moving on scary.

I give this book a Five out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library. show less

I wanted to love this book, I really did. I was hooked at the first page, thought it was going to blow my mind, but all that awesome, weird, creepy premise got lost in the boring, bizarre town politics and just limped along, sputtering... I really liked Clementine and she should have stayed as the main focus throughout the book. The weirdness of her being trapped in a cellar for 10 years and no one knowing who she is, even her own family was so good! But it wasn't ever fully explored or explained-there were so many elements crammed in and so many ends dangling around, so confusing... I surprised myself by finishing it. I kept hoping things would get clearer, pull together into a solid narrative, but no. Hope denied.

This book was more like 2 stars for me("it's okay"), but due to goodreads's whacked out way of inflating scores I feel bad giving it even a 3, because it's not terrible, it's just vague and not enough.

This book is not bad, it just left me wanting. I wanted more polish, more filling. The impression I was left with as I read was that it was trying for a lyrical sort of "less is more" and somehow managed to leave me with "less is just not quite enough."

Clementine begins the book trapped in a cellar where she has been for years. She is freed and magically accepted immediately by her cousin and magically has knowledge of the town thanks to her years of "dreaming" about the town. Of course, she doesn't know what the Reckoning was even though show more it was the biggest thing to hit the town, ever. Okay, it's a teen lit book. I get that. Unfortunately this sort of vague finger waving continues and I really just didn't find it well done enough to be truly enjoyable. It jarred me again and again.

She is instantly attracted to Fisher, the cute, popular boy who saved her (hello, YA trope that I will always be tired of.) Okay, fine. Her cousin instantly accepts her, and the town folk, who are supposedly skittish and spooky of magic essentially overlook the fact that she has magically rearrived in a family loudly blamed for the Reckoning. Right. These people who killed and burned, etc. just sort of side eye her and move on. Someone has clearly never been to a racist small town. That's not how small minded bigots work.

Essentially the description of this book reads as though Clementine has a vendetta and is out looking to discover what happened to her. In reality Clementine is a watery creature who hangs out with her cousin, delicately feels bad for everyone and is magically in love with and loved by Fisher. Okay, but I just sort of wanted to shake her. Here is a girl who lived in a cellar, covered by dirt, for years, and her response to everything is a sort of gentle, wafting, "fix-it" with just enough rebellion to keep her from being beyond boring.

Eventually Clementine finds out what the Reckoning is, because she wasn't smart enough to ever sit down and say "somebody tell me what the **** is going on." We as the reader get to see the magic in the town, with very little actual explanation, and I know that slow drift of knowledge is very fun and a good way to set the mood, but in this book it just meant the one truly interesting thing, the Fiends, were essentially just drifting back characters.

We really learn almost nothing about the Fiends, except that they exist, there is literally one sentence that tells us they used to somehow be involved and invited into the town and we are given one bit of foreshadowing that they seem to like Clementine. I'm honestly not 100% sure what Clementine's powers are, unless you consider deus ex machina a power. So, we have these Fiends, who are described in very interesting ways, which I wanted to see actually DO something to show what exactly they were. Nope.

Instead what we have is an ending that made me want to beat my head against a wall. Spoilers!! We eventually drag out of the narrative that there are 5 powerful young people in this town, and due to their proximity they essentially increase the magic and make it want to eat people. Alright, not quite, but that's what's relevant to our staggering plot. We get introduced to 4 of them as a group. The author lets us bond, then tells us that, oh, by the way, unless they can control themselves one of them will have to die because they're just too much. So, what does the person who brings this news do? Does she send her own grandchild off or tell them to leave? Nope, she essentially shrugs and goes on. Bad idea. So, of course, the 5th character who we've barely met, except to know that her father abuses her, is going to be our scapegoat/sacrifice. Long story short. Said character kills her Fiend mother (so why is she not the one who the Fiends like/with power over the Fiends??) and her human father and then the Reckoning starts all over, the town yeehaws ride out with guns and start trying to burn the house of Clementine's cousin, then our 5th character starts flooding the place and there's fighting, blah, blah, blah, and then Clementine magically calls the Fiends (seriously, they could have been so cool if they were better used, but mostly they were too background to be anything but an insert). The Fiends take our 5th character away, things are magically fixed and the yeehaws with guns go home. And then, here's what bugs the shit out of me, despite the fact that the townspeople have no evidence of how things are magically fixed up by Clementine they somehow know it was Clementine who called the Fiends and that's how it got fixed. Much hand waving. The book just needed more. More fiends. More filling in. More common sense. More character development of a handful of background characters who seemed to morph into various shapes/whatever fit the moment.

In the end the book kept my attention, which is more than I can say of many books lately, however, that was mostly a product of it's sheer simplicity vs. it giving me anything like I wanted. I enjoy several other books by this author, so I do not believe it is her style (I love slow, drifting plot lines and world development), but this one just lacked it for me. Disappointed in what I feel like I could have had, vs. disappointed in the book as a whole. show less

Actual Rating: 3.5 stars

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What’s funny about Fiendish is that I was really tempted to DNF after the first chapter. I was confused and it didn’t make any damn sense. Plus, I’ve been DNFing left and right and that’s been working for me. However, I pushed on a couple of chapters and Fiendish got really good. So basically, I am here to tell you that, even if you find the start really puzzling and off-putting, keep going because it will make sense. If you’re into southern gothic witchy horror, you will not want to miss Yovanoff’s latest.

Yovanoff has an outstanding way with setting a mood. Every bit of her writing and setting comes together into this dreamy, gothic show more sense that pervades absolutely every bit of the book. It’s enchanting really and helps catch the reader up and make the strange world within convincing. She has a way of making this paranormal story seem magical and completely ordinary all at the same time. The writing itself isn’t particularly complex, but somehow it all comes together perfectly and does just what it needs to do. Gothic writing isn’t generally my thing, but I think Yovanoff does it beautifully here.

Fiendish has a great hook. The first chapter, as I said is confusing, a hodgepodge of strange images and memories all swirled together. After that, though, the heroine, Clementine DeVore, is rescued from a cellar she’s been trapped in for 10 years. How did she survive? Magic. Deal with that, okay. Magic pervades this book and either you like that or you don’t. Clementine was down there in some sort of stasis, occasionally seeing through the eyes of someone else, her own sewn shut, trapped from the age of seven. At this point, I had to know what was going on in this town, even before I was really engaged. This kept me reading.

Which is good, because this book is creepy in such a good way. This town, you see, borders on this magical place called the Hollow and there are witchy people living in the town. There are also normal people who hate the witchy people, most of whom try to hide their craft. The powers are tied to the elements, like dirt, fire, water, air. Down in the hollows, there are helldogs and fiends and magic is so potent. It all has a very organic feel and, damn, is it terrifying when the reckoning comes and the magic spills over.

Also, in case you couldn’t tell from the horror label, but this book is dark dark dark. It’s not the sort of story with an easy resolution. There is pain and things are uncomfortable as all hell. This is not a pretty, fluffy fantasy, nor is it for the faintest of heart. I’m not too easily scared by books, but there were a couple of memorably haunting scenes in this one.

The characters are interesting, which I mean in its true definition not in the one where interesting means awful or boring. Clementine, actually, is probably the least compelling of the set for me. Shiny, her cousin, is sassy, bitchy and fiery. Rae’s the one magical person who seems truly capable of control, even as things fall apart, sort of the Velma of the group. There’s creepy old man Heintz with his horrible zoo and his abused daughter Davenport. The cast is as strange and atmospheric as the magic they wield.

The only thing that left me cold was the romance. Because of reasons, Clementine sort of saw Fisher while she was trapped in the cellar. It’s the paranormal clichés with Fisher being a bad boy and Shiny warning her away, but Clementine is too drawn to him for that. He even tells her to stay away for her own good, but oh no. They’re such cheeseballs and, while they don’t actually claim to be in love because thank kanye the romance isn’t a huge factor most of the time, the whole thing smacks of instalove. I do not ship it and I do not care about their feelings.

Come to fiendish for the dark and creepy, and you shall likely leave satisfied, my friends. It’s fun watching Yovanoff getting better and better at her own craft, and I’m looking forward to what she does next. show less

People throw the word "southern gothic" around a lot with novels like this, but Yovanoff manages to get something really deep in the bones. The cadence of the language, the small things (not just throwaway references to Cheerwine).

My only complaint is that it felt a bit short, like I would have liked to see what she could have done if given more room.