Dead Girls Don't Dream

Starred review from September 2, 2024
Teenage Riley Walcott knows all the stories about Voynich Woods and the cryptids rumored to inhabit it, and exploring it proves to be an apt outlet through which she processes her grief over her mother’s abandonment of the family. When Riley is murdered by masked assailants one night deep in the woods during some kind of arcane ritual, she’s shocked when she’s brought back to life by a young witch named Madelyn, who lives in Voynich Woods with her powerful and domineering mother. Together, Riley and Madelyn investigate the truth behind the legends that seek to control both their lives. In the process, each discovers previously untapped power. Text by Cipri (Defekt) crackles with righteous rage that’s tempered by a palpable tenderness for the vulnerabilities of adolescence. The magic of solidarity between survivors of corrupt systems is a potent force throughout this incandescent horror novel that pulls no punches, resulting in a brutal modern fairy tale whose examinations of neglect, power, and survival pay off in dividends. Major characters cue as white. Ages 14–up.

Starred review from October 1, 2024
There are ghosts in the woods...but they're not the worst things out there. Their mother, who struggled with addiction, has skipped town, so 17-year-old Riley Walcott lives on the edge of Voynich Woods with her 10-year-old sister, Sam, and their uncle. Uncle Toby makes a living giving tours of the woods to tourists who are morbidly interested in the many people who have disappeared there. One day, Sam wanders off during a tour, looking for the Wishing Tree, another one of the woods' mysteries. Riley follows to keep an eye on her but ends up getting lost herself. She stumbles across the elusive Wishing Tree--and is promptly murdered by people in masks. Shortly after, Madelyn, who lives in the woods with her abusive witch mother, revives Riley with her own magic. But--at Riley's own invitation--something attached itself to her before she came back to life. As events bring the two girls closer together, they each seek an escape--Riley from being another Voynich Woods mystery and Madelyn from her power-hungry mother. Cipri's young adult debut is a coming-of-age tale that's dripping with dark magic, steeped in mother-child trauma, and brimming with feminine power. Readers get a strong sense of place and characters from the text, which candidly reveals the two protagonists' complicated inner emotional lives. Even the more outrageously fantastical elements fit naturally into this world. Characters largely present white. A stellar example of how the horror genre can embody authentic emotional experiences.(Horror. 14-18)

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 15, 2024
Grades 9-12 Something is lurking in the Voynich Woods. For the last century, beginning with the disappearance of young Camille Voynich, people have been going missing under the trees, never to be seen again. Riley Walcott isn't scared of the woods, though; she grew up in the nearby town and helps her uncle run a museum and tour about Voynich's creepy happenings, knowing to follow the rules. But when she follows her little sister, Sam, off the path one afternoon, she learns firsthand the rumors of ritual sacrifice are all too true. Enter Madelyn: daughter of a local witch, she lives deep within the woods, terrified of her mother's rage and cruelty. But still, she brings Riley back to life at huge risk to herself. It will take both Madelyn and Riley to fight against the cycles of life, death, and exchange of power that have ruled over Voynich for far too long. As twisting and haunting as a gnarled old tree, this queer coming-of-age novel is chock-full of body horror, monsters, strange magic, and a mythos so strong it bursts through the pages.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 1, 2025
Sisters Riley and Sam help their uncle run his museum of dark folklore and unexplained disappearances next to spooky Voynich Woods. One day, Sam flees into the woods to escape a rude tourist; Riley goes after her and is murdered. But magically endowed Madelyn, who lives in the woods with her abusive Mother, finds Riley's grave under the creepy "Wishing Tree" and brings her back, albeit with a hole in her chest filled with a "black, half-solid ooze." While Riley returns home and tries to hide the change death has wrought in her, Madelyn begins to learn what (or who) has been fueling the tree, which gives Mother her power. This compelling novel features many horror staples freshly woven together: a partially decayed, drowned ghost girl who can travel anywhere water flows and who helps Riley and Madelyn; a voracious tree with a hunger for vengeance; a man created by Mother, stuffed with "twisted, rusted nails," who helps with her grisly business; and a nineteenth-century family tragedy with long coattails in the present. Less common in the horror genre but welcome here are a blossoming romance between Riley and Madelyn and a feminist message of ownership over one's own body, something Madelyn has never known, so that by the end of this harrowing tale, Cipri -- and readers -- have earned the hopeful ending. Anita L. Burkam

(Copyright 2025 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)