Chime

Starred review from January 17, 2011
After too long of an absence, Billingsley (The Folk Keeper) returns with the quirky but rich tale of 17-year-old Briony, who is convinced that she's a witch. Not only is Briony responsible for her twin sister Rose's disabling fall from a swing years earlier, causing brain-damage, she also believes she caused her stepmother's death. The 20th century has arrived in backwater Swampsea, England, and with it such wonders as railroads, motorcars, and pumping stations to drain the bog. But the supernatural Old Ones are unhappy with technology and have sent a fever to punish the children of Swampsea, including Rose. Desperate to save her sister's life, Briony is torn between her painful belief in her own irredeemably evil nature and her attraction to handsome, newly arrived bad boy Eldric Clayborne. "How could I bear it, Eldric living with us, this non-child, this boy-man? I'd have to keep on my Briony mask.... I'd have to keep my tongue sharp and amusing. Already I was exhausted." Filled with eccentric characters—self-hating Briony foremost—and oddly beautiful language, this is a darkly beguiling fantasy. Ages 12–up.

Starred review from January 15, 2011

"I've confessed to everything and I'd like to be hanged. Now, if you please." From those arresting first lines to the very last word, readers will find themselves enthralled by 17-year-old Briony as she spins a tale of guilt, mystery, betrayal and, above all, love. Briony lives at the literal end of the line in the Swampsea with her developmentally delayed twin sister, Rose, and her clergyman father (her beloved Stepmother has recently died of arsenic poisoning—a suicide?). Mr. Clayborne, an engineer, who has been sent to drain the swamp so the railroad can go through, and his son, Eldric, who sports "a long, curling lion's smile," have just moved into the parsonage. The Boggy Mun of the swamp doesn't care to be drained, though, and he will exact his revenge. Billingsley takes the time to develop a layered narrative adorned with linguistic filigree—she is one of the great prose stylists of the field, moving from one sparklingly unexpected image to the next and salting her story with quicksilver dialogue. She sets the tale in a gently alternate turn-of-the-20th-century England in which Mr. Darwin, Dr. Freud, witches and the Old Ones coexist. Briony, hugely likable despite her dismal self-hatred, is devilishly smart and funny, and readers will root for her with every turn of the page. Delicious. (Fantasy. 14 & up)

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Starred review from March 1, 2011

Gr 7 Up-Born precisely at midnight, that eldritch hour between one day and the next, Briony has always been a bit fey. But it isn't until her twin sister, Rose, is hurt while they are swinging together and her stepmother is tragically crippled in a freak accident that Briony comes to believe that she is a witch, doomed to end her life dangling from the hangman's noose. She only begins to hope that she might not be quite as wicked and damned as she had thought when she is befriended by a newcomer to the village, a beautiful boy with leonine grace and electric eyes. The magnificently dark romantic setting and lovely, lyrical language and imagery enhance a novel that is both lushly sensual and shivery. Billingsley's YA debut is a memorable one.-Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage Public Library, AK

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2011
Grades 8-12 *Starred Review* Since her stepmothers recent death, 17-year-old Briony Larkin knows that if she can keep two secretsthat she is a witch and that she is responsible for the accident that left Rose, her identical twin, mentally compromisedand remember to hate herself always, no other harm will befall her family in their Swampsea parsonage at the beginning of the twentieth century. The arrival of Mr. Clayborne, a city engineer, and his university-dropout son, Eldric, makes Brionys task difficult. Claybornes plan to drain the swamp has made the Old Ones unhappy, particularly the Boggy Mun, who has plagued the villages children with swamp cough in retaliation. When Roses lingering illness turns into a cough, Briony knows that she must do whatever it takes, even revealing her secrets, to save her sister. While thwarting the advances of an arsenic-addicted suitor, Briony must also deny her feelings for Eldric, even as he helps her solve the puzzle that has become her life. Exploring the powers of guilt and redemption, Billingsley (The Folk Keeper, 1999) has crafted a dark, chilling yet stunning world. Brionys many mysteries and occasional sardonic wit make her a force to be reckoned with. Exquisite to the final word.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)