The Accident Season

It's October, and 17-year-old Cara and her family are girding themselves for the accident season. For her family, this is the time of year when frequently and randomly "bones break, skin tears, bruises bloom." Sometimes disasters can be more devastating--Cara's father died nine Octobers ago. Colby Minifie's accent immediately transports listeners to Cara's small Irish town. She also carries listeners into Cara's inner world, where worries about mishaps mingle with uncomfortable romantic feelings for her stepbrother. Minifie is as masterful at registering mounting tension as Fowley-Doyle is at increasing the story's menace. As Halloween nears, mystery and magic, specters and secrets make it difficult to tell the real from the fantastical. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

Starred review from October 26, 2015
Actress Minifie’s audio performance of Fowley-Doyle’s debut YA novel is spot-on. Her lyrical, youthful brogue is the perfect match for protagonist Cara Morris, an Irish teen whose family—single mom, slightly older sister Alice, and step-brother Sam—becomes particularly susceptible to accidents once a year during the month of October. That’s just one supernatural aspect in a plot that’s layered in magical realism and filtered through Cara’s vivid imagination. Performing with an Irish accident seems to rolls off Minifie’s tongue, and she creates a slew of voices for the characters. Sam’s voice has a husky quality, and Alice’s speech incorporates teenage angst, carrying a touch of Valley Girl impatience. As for protagonist Cara, Minifie presents her with a childlike, at times dreamy delivery that shifts swiftly from emotional highs to lows as she deals with a ghostly specter, painful memories, her first love affair, and, of course, the Halloween’s potential for family mishaps. Ages 14–up. A Penguin/Dawson hardcover.

May 11, 2015
It’s the last week of the “accident season”—the superstitious way Cara’s family marks October—and the 17-year-old is trying to avoid disaster. That’s difficult when she is simultaneously unraveling a strange discovery that involves her family’s photos and trying to be a regular teenager, including grappling with confusing romantic feelings for Sam, her ex-stepbrother. Debut author Fowley-Doyle weaves an enchanting ghost story set in a small Irish river town, where magical elements collide with brutal realities. Elsie, the classmate who can be seen in Cara’s family pictures, is the harbinger of the unveiling of secrets, putting a commonsensical twist on what Cara’s mother has chalked up to the family’s terrible luck. Like a phantom guide, Elsie shows up in shop windows and old newspaper clippings, leaving a trail of clues that sends Cara and her siblings to a decrepit haunted house on the edge of town. The answers lead to a fairly predictable plot twist, but the endearing coming-of-age narrative about emotionally scarred young adults trying to find their tribe more than compensates. Ages 14–up.