Malinda Lo

When was the last time you read a book that grabbed you right from the very first sentence—and didn’t let go until you got to the last?

It happened to me last week when I read Shadowed Summer, an atmospheric, suspenseful, and compact (183 tightly crafted pages) novel about 14-year-old Iris, who likes to cast spells (at least that’s what she thinks they are) in the graveyard with her best friend, Collette. Neither of them are prepared when a ghost actually appears, setting them off on a ghost hunt that involves a long-ago death and plenty of family secrets.

Shadowed Summer perfectly evokes the lazy, thick heat of summer, as well as those emotionally charged teen years when you and your best friend took your first steps toward adulthood. I didn’t grow up in Louisiana, where the book is set, but there was something about the sense of place in this book that settled within me and reminded me, deeply, of my own summers as a teen. The long, empty stretches of nothing to do; the desire for mystery when it might have been wiser to be content with what existed; the frustrating feeling that adults knew so much more than what they were telling me, combined with a kind of youthful blindness to what that might actually mean.

For those who might not normally read books with main characters who are 14, let me tell you that the story it told worked a spell on me. For queer readers especially, this book is bittersweet and compelling.

Here’s the first line that hooked me:

Nothing ever happened in Ondine, Louisiana, not even the summer Elijah Landry disappeared.

Simple and direct, with the mystery right there, yet wrapped up in a conundrum.

Shadowed Summer is available at your local bookstore or at Amazon. Check out Saundra Mitchell’s website right here.