Shelf Awareness--The Bad Ones

YA Review: The Bad Ones

The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert (Flatiron, 400p., ages 13-up, 9781250894892 )

The Bad Ones, a stand-alone title by Melissa Albert, author of the Hazel Wood series, seductively conjures a haunting, wintry world where the darker side of make-believe becomes real.

Palmetto High School junior Nora Powell is concerned when she gets a weird text from her estranged "soul mate," the "heather-eyed and autumn-haired" Becca Cross. Nora rushes to Becca's house in the "snow-dusted" night but finds no trace of the girl. She does, however, find cryptic messages from Becca about the goddess game, a "fucked-up" rite of passage based on local legend. According to the story, a girl died at the high school and her friends invented "a ritual that would bring her back to life." And it's not only Becca who has disappeared--three other town residents have also mysteriously gone missing. Nora investigates by traveling into the forest where she and Becca played as children, imagining their own powerful deities; looking around the darkroom where Becca spent so much time on her art; and questioning their teachers and not-so-innocent classmates. Becca's voice and a "back-of-the-neck feeling of dread" spur Nora on. As the teen probes further, she discovers multiple similar "spooky" disappearances from the past, all with the goddess game at their heart.

Albert's silky prose transports readers in and out of time and possibility by including enigmatic remembrances of important moments from the past that relate to Nora's first-person narrative. Each memory gives more information and context, helping lead to the explosive climax and aftermath. In The Bad Ones, the author has created a menacing, mythic place with an intoxicating, "off-kilter, Wonderland vibe." --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author.