The Awakening

January 6, 2020
The overcomplicated and sometimes gruesome sequel to 2016’s Oakwood Island raises fascinating questions but answers few of them. Five relatively quiet years after the events of the previous book, supernatural danger returns to Oakwood Island in two apparently unconnected forms: a mysterious fungus infects local wildlife, causing them to attack humans, and a curse from 1898 is reborn in four-year-old twins Patrick and Lily. Detective Burke, frustrated by a string of unsolved deaths from five years ago, detailed in book one, teams up with scientist Jin Hong to investigate a possible connection between the fungus and the fatalities, while offensively stereotyped Mi’kmaw elder Jack Whitefeather, who has the power to see through the eyes of a crow, works to counteract the twins’ curse. Unfortunately, the story is cluttered with thinly sketched secondary characters, and the connection between the muddled central mysteries never becomes clear. This is strictly for series completists.