My Throat an Open GraveReview posted January 4, 2025.
Page Street YA, 2024. 301 pages.
Review written December 30, 2024, from a library book.
Starred Review
2024 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#7 Teen Speculative Fiction
Based on the cover, not being a horror fan, I honestly didn't expect to even like this book. I expected I'd give up after about twenty pages, deciding it's not for me. I did not at all expect to read it avidly and to be sorry I was finished at the end because I loved it. I didn't expect to recognize shades of my own upbringing in its pages and to have my heart go out to the girl telling the story.
Now, I also don't like books where religious people are the bad guys - except, well, when they deserve to be. This book portrays a rural village in a forest - where the church is the center of the community and it's all about purity culture. The girls are given a "Love Waits" ring and told that if they "give themselves" before marriage, they will be broken and worthless.
But they're also told about the Lord of the Wood. Sometimes he comes into the village and takes babies. And then the villagers send a girl to the Lord of the Wood to get the baby back. Only no babies or girls have ever returned.
And now it's Leah's turn. She's convinced that because she was worn down by her baby brother's cries and wished for respite - that must be why the Lord of the Wood took him away. And her mother is convinced it's Leah's fault, too. So the whole village gathers in the church. Her mother brings her forward, the pastor marks her with a bloody hand print, and together the whole village sends her across the river to the Lord of the Wood.
And then she meets the Lord of the Wood, and he's not what she expected at all. In fact, that part is what made me love the book. There's a whole community on the other side of the river. They're kind, compassionate, and patient with Leah, and she begins to be able to see herself more clearly.
There's magic in this book, and magic in the Lord of the Wood and the community living in the forest. But it's not the sinister magic Leah was led to believe in, and the people she meets there win her heart, as well as winning over the reader.
But she also has to reckon with what she learned about her home village. And about herself.
This isn't so much a book for horror fans as it is a book shining light on the damage that purity culture can do and celebrating self-determination and the beauty of young lives - rising above judgment.
Trust me! It's a wonderful book!