Wake the Hollow

Triana (Summer of Yesterday, 2014, etc.) takes inspiration from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in this horror-tinged YA novel. Six years ago, Micaela Burgos left Sleepy Hollow, New York, and moved to Miami with her father, leaving her mother behind with her creepy doll collection and obsession with the village's most famous inhabitant, Washington Irving. Her mother always told Micaela that they were descended from Irving--but everyone knows he had no children, and how would Mami's Cuban parents be related to him anyway? After years of little contact, Micaela, now a senior in high school, receives a letter from her mother, saying only, "Lela, please come home. It's urgent." By the time Micaela heeds the summons, Mami is dead, apparently of a fall in the bathtub. But the teen keeps having dreams about a ghostly woman who's somehow familiar. As Micaela tries to learn what her mother wanted from her, she finds herself attracted to two very different boys: childhood friend Bram Derant, a member of one of the town's oldest families, and Dane Boracich, a skinny graduate student trying to prove that Irving had a child after all, the result of an affair with the widowed Mary Shelley. Both of the boys warn her not to trust the other--and neither of them is telling her the whole truth. As forces ghostly and mundane work to isolate Micaela, can she find the strength to stand on her own--and fulfill her mother's mission? In this page-turning, eerie novel, the author skillfully builds an air of quiet menace, where "pumpkins sit on front porches like families gathered in the dark, telling ghost stories." The book's action scenes echo the rhythms of hoofbeats, and the reader's pulse should pound along with Micaela's. It's indeed ambitious to write a horror story involving Irving and Shelley, titans of the genre; luckily, Triana turns out to be up to the challenge, with a smart, unusual take on the true legend of Sleepy Hollow. A spooky and satisfying literary mystery that features two celebrated authors. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 1, 2016

Gr 7 Up-From the opening pages, this spooky YA immerses readers in an atmosphere reminiscent of the "real" Sleepy Hollow-a dark train station, late at night, a chilly wind, mysterious voices echoing in the air. Micaela Burgos, a prodigal daughter of the town Washington Irving's headless horseman made famous, returns to belatedly make things right with her mother, who died six weeks earlier. Mica has been living the good life with her father in Miami; her mother stayed behind to pursue her obsession with Irving; she claims to be a direct descendant of him (though her parents were both Cuban exiles). She and Mica have barely spoken since, and the teen's grief at the nature of this loss gives the book a strong emotional core to hang some of its more haunting happenings on (a haunted graveyard, Micaela's own encounters with ghosts). The complicated narrative includes lost literary masterpieces and generational grudges. Frankenstein author Mary Shelley even makes an appearance. The work's literary hook may be lost on some teens not as well acquainted with these figures, but the thoroughly modern heroine and prominent love triangle will keep most of them reading. The protagonist's ethnic background serves the plot well, adding nuance to her status as an outsider in the small, mostly homogeneous town. VERDICT A good addition to any YA mystery collection.-Bobbi Parry, East Baton Rouge Parish School System, LA

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