Shelf Awareness--The Invocations

YA Review: The Invocations

The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland (Nancy Paulsen Books, 400p., ages 12-up, 9780593532263)

The Invocations is a delightfully dark and haunting tale that follows three young women grappling with a supernatural witch-killer while trying to exorcise their own demons.

Emer's entire coven was murdered at their family home in Ireland when she was seven and, 10 years later, she's still "frantic and afraid that she [is] being hunted." She hides among college students at Oxford, where the Bodleian library has all the books on protolanguages, sigils, runes, and dead languages a witch could want, to write the perfect spell for vengeance. Seventeen-year-old Jude is struggling to survive with three demons inside her. Her father's billions can't save her, so Jude searches for a talented witch to fix her "rotting flesh" and "necrotic" soul. Gray-eyed, blonde Zara, also 17, is desperate to raise her murdered sister from the grave. Zara's thirst for knowledge about necromancy leads her to Jude, and to a murder victim with a missing patch of skin. Together, the girls find "cursewriter" Emer. The murder victim--a witch and former client of Emer's--is only the first in a series of magic-working victims with a connection to Emer. The teens band together in a desperate hunt for the impossible, "abomination" of a serial killer.

Krystal Sutherland (House of Hollow) skillfully delivers a bewitching tale of "curses and demons and tethers," one where young women are prey, and magic has gone dreadfully wrong. Her solidly crafted world features a riveting mystery that matches her ravishing prose. Themes of misogyny, power, and vengeance, plus a dash of queer romance, make this sometimes grotesque, always sublime novel a captivating read. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author.