Children of the Dark

Taking care of his six-year-old sister and his mother, who is addicted to drugs, has forced 15-year-old Will to grow up quickly in his small Southern town of Shadeland. Will and his group of outcast friends face the usual torments: bullying by the in-crowd and girls who seem just out of reach. But things are not always what they seem. Mia, the girl of Will's dreams, seems to reciprocate Will's feelings. All goes well—until the bullies enter the scene and one of the girls is hauled off into the woods by a monsterlike hand. An intricate intermingled plot involving evil creatures keeps this title from being a typical coming-of-age story. The first half of the novel introduces the characters and backstory, and by then, the mayhem of a serial killer and mystical monsters becomes believable, though readers will be wondering what's going on. The unbelievably irresponsible police officers might be problematic if this book were a more realistic coming-of-age tale, but in a more fantastical genre, they make sense.