The Winter People

October 1, 2014

Gr 9 Up-Salome Montgomery hates winter. Having fallen through the frozen pond on her grandmother's land as a child due to haunting voices wanting to kill her, she works hard to stay away from the gated woods on the family property. But when her grandparents go to the warmth of Arizona for health reasons, Salome has to take care to keep her family land safe. Discovering that there is more to the voices that she first thought, Salome is pulled into a land of magic, danger, and a curse that has haunted her family for centuries. She is the only one capable of saving not just herself but an entire race of people. But will Salome be able to break the curse before she's killed? The plot of The Winter People is fascinating enough to keep readers interested, but many of the more intriguing aspects, such as Salome's attempts to figure out how to break the curse and just why her family was cursed in the first place, are glossed over in favor of a complicated but incredibly bland love square among Salome; Nevin, the mysterious stranger; Gareth, the other mysterious stranger; and Colton, the boy Salome has gone to school with for years. Purdy's storytelling lacks punch, characters are two-dimensional, and plot elements are told rather than shown. The action falls flat and there is never a true sense of danger, leading to an anticlimactic climax. Readers who enjoy novels dealing with fairies may enjoy this one, but authors like Julie Kagawa and Holly Black have done this before and have done it much better.-Paige Garrison, Aurora Central Public Library, CO

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.