Marion is trying to keep it together for her family and take care of everyone as her mother can't. Her father was killed in a hit and run accident and now their whole lives are being uprooted to Sawkill Island, where girls go missing in increasing frequency. Rumors of a supernatural creature called the Collector swirl around the town, but no concrete answers are found. Zoey was friends with the last girl who disappeared and fights to find out what happened to her while the rest seem happy to not think about it. Val knows exactly what's happening, but doesn't know if the path her mother laid out for her and wants her to follow is what she wants anymore. All three girls can choose to unite and be more powerful together despite their differences or fight against each other instead of the evil that plagues their town.
Sawkill Girls is an amazing novel all about girls: their friendship, romance, anger, grief, conflicts, self discovery, and the way others try to exploit them. The world feels a bit like our world with things hidden underneath that people explain away like Sunnydale in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Most on Sawkill Island see the Mortimer horse farm, the scenic cliffs, and the run of the mill inhabitants, but the decades of unsolved missing girls cases with no evidence pointing to what really happened to them, the increasing number of these incidents, and an urban legend about a creature known as The Collector points to something deeply wrong about the town under its facade.
The three main characters all occupy a different space in the town and seem like unlikely choices for teaming up in any way. Marion is the new girl in town who hasn't quite found her place yet. The death of her father still feels raw and she's filled with anger and self doubt, which she pushes away to be the pillar of support her family's needs, especially alleviating pressure from her mom. When Charlotte disappears, it's another huge blow to the remainder of her family. I feel the most for Marion because I also lost my father and her feelings and actions all ring true to me. Trying to act normal while your own life feels like it's falling apart is incredibly hard and draining. Later in the book, her budding relationship with Val felt wrong because of Val's secret life, but it's the one thing she has for herself only and not anyone else. The romance is so sweet and wonderful, but also throws a bit of a wrench in what was previously a straight forward good vs. evil story.
Zoey is a pariah in her community because of rumors around her breaking up with her boyfriend Grayson and as one of few African American people on the island. After being intimate with him, she finds that she's asexual and uninterested in repeating the act. She doesn't want to hold him back or make him regret their relationship, so she decides to end it without discussion. I haven't ready many books with asexual protagonists and it was eye opening to see society's view of sexuality making her question if she's broken in some way. On top of that, her best friend Thora is missing and presumed dead. Everyone seems to have moved on and given up but Zoey, who does everything she can including snooping through her cop dad's things to find answers. She suspects Val had something to do with it and rightfully doesn't want to work with her later in the book.
Val rules as the queen bee of the island, always the center of social situations, throwing parties, and living in luxury. Underneath it all, she and her mother are enslaved by the creature known as the Collector and have to do what it says as it grows in strength or it will hurt them. Growing up this way had Val accept that this is just her way life. Her mother is bonded with the creature while she is being groomed to take over, like a sick arranged marriage. Looking at the history, her grandmother bonded with it in order to escape abuse in a time when women had status equal to property. Now, the same traditions are expected to continue through three generations when it's not really needed anymore due to physical and emotional threats from the Collector. Meeting Marion makes Val reject this future and forge her own path instead of repeating her mother's mistakes. Val started out being my most hated character and by the end she changed to my favorite because of the way she worked through pain and suffering in order to find her own way.
* spoilers*
All three girls have powers emerge that will equip them to defeat the Collector. Together, they perform a sort of exorcism on Val to release her from its influence. Instead of a patriarchal figure like a priest, the three girls accomplish this on their own. Unfortunately, a cult called the Hand of Light thinks the three girls need to kill each other in order for the creature to be temporarily defeated. They are straight up misogynists that believe the girls' gender makes them inherently weak even though they have incredible powers never given to men. Like a way worse version of the Watcher's Council in Buffy, these men have decided that extraordinary girls are disposable and merely objects to break for a goal. The girls prove them wrong in the end and I've never been so pumped for a book's ending like this one.
Sawkill Girls is a novel I want to push into everyone's hands. It's dark, twisty, and twisted with fully fleshed out girls and their journeys at the center of it all. The mythology, relationships, and background are all well built. At its core, the messages are about girls having power over the trajectory of their lives whether or not it's deemed acceptable by society. My only tiny criticism is that parts of it were a bit heavy handed, but it makes sense with the target audience. I want to devour every book by Claire Legrand like right now and then impatiently wait for more.
My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins
1 comment:
This one one of my favorite reads from last year for all the reasons you pointed out. I also liked the way that the writing was able to express the violence of the monster in a way that was (somehow) both gory and subtle. A neat trick to pull off.
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