Author(s): Rachel Burge

Teenagers | Mel M's Book Talkers

Part ghost story, part Nordic thriller - this is a twisty, tense and spooky YA debut, perfect for fans of CORALINE and Michelle Paver.

Martha can tell things about a person just by touching their clothes, as if their emotions and memories have been absorbed into the material. It started the day she fell from the tree at her grandma's cabin and became blind in one eye.

Determined to understand her strange ability, Martha sets off to visit her grandmother, Mormor - only to discover Mormor is dead, a peculiar boy is in her cabin and a terrifying creature is on the loose.

Then the spinning wheel starts creaking, books move around and terror creeps in . . .

CONSTANT READER STAFF REVIEW: MEL M

As someone who loves a bit of Norse mythology and horror fiction, I found this debut YA novel thoroughly enjoyable. Martha is a seventeen year-old girl who secretly journeys to Norway in search of an explanation for her strange ability to read people’s emotions and histories through their clothes. This journey quickly turns into a supernatural coming-of-age tale with a focus on the value of knowing one’s matrilineal ancestry. Burge is clearly skilled in the art of evoking a mythological world just underneath our own daily existence, and in also sprinkling this dark world with lighter moments between people.

I’d recommend this to the older fans of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.