Robin Wasserman

After a series of suicide-killings and a deadly storm, the residents of the town of Oleander, Kansas, start acting even more strangely than would be expected. Only the five witnesses of the murders retain their sound minds, and they must band together to save the town from whatever has come over it.

The Waking Dark

Jessica Nottingham

Holy YA Batman. Seriously. The Waking Dark absolutely blew me away. Those of you who were following along with me as I read might have noticed it took me a while to finish. Trust me when I say that it's not because this book isn't fantastic, because it absolutely is. I'll explain more below, but let's just say this isn't necessarily an easy read. I thought I was desensitized to violence, what with how much horror I read. This book tested that theory. It's dark and disturbing. You've been warned.
 
See here's the thing, it's the characters that suck you in. Each one of them is so very different. You have your jock, your church girl, your outcast, and more. If this sounds a bit like The Breakfast Club, let me assure you that it couldn't be farther from the truth. The thing is that each one of these characters has a full, rich back story. They each have a series of events that have led them to be what they are now, and a ton of buried secrets that you slowly uncover along with them. I was a slave to the pages. I had to know what happened to these characters. It was amazing.
 
That's just the surface though. The plot of The Waking Dark is equally impressive. Imagine your average town in the middle of nowhere. The one where everyone knows everyone else, and for the most part people are content to get along. Now imagine that same town going stark raving mad. It was intriguing how Robin Wasserman set this up. I hesitate to say too much, since I don't want to spoil anything, but every person in this book never stops being themselves. They just give in to the parts of themselves that they never let see the light of day before. That's what makes the story terrifying. It's also what makes it so hard to look away from.
 
This book is sad. It's violent and twisted. It's filled with bad things that happen to good people and, even more difficult, young people. This is what made this such a long read for me. I couldn't stop reading, and yet I had to because no one in this book ever gets a break. Really, nothing ever seems to go right. The Waking Dark stirred up emotions in me that I wasn't expecting. 
 
So yes, I highly recommend Robin Wasserman's beauty of a book. It's not going to be the right fit for a lot of people, but it definitely was for me. Five gold stars go to The Waking Dark, and onto my favorites list it goes.

The Waking Dark

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