Savannah Grey

Gr 7 Up—Savannah Grey's throat has felt very strange for a long time. Her foster mother tells her that she's been making unusual sounds in her sleep—squeaks, clicks, even an odd liquid sound. Things might be looking up for her, though, because her friend Nina has a boy that Savannah just has to meet. Reece is different from other boys her age and he, too, has something wrong with his throat. During a hospital visit, Savannah suddenly has on overwhelming desire to protect her throat, striking out at the doctor and then fleeing the building. With the aid of Nina and her phone's camera, she finds brown lumps and yellow stripes in her throat. She feels certain that these unusual structures are a sonic weapon meant to keep her safe from a monster that is lurking nearby. She has, in fact, already been visited by a monster with a doglike body but star-shaped head. To top that off, the Horror has donned a blonde wig and yellow dress and attempts to confine its movements to those of ballet. Interspersed with the chapters focusing on Savannah, her struggle to understand her new powers, and her growing relationship with Reece are others that focus on the real villain, the Ocrassa, a creature alien to Earth that has evolved over time to be a nearly perfect killing machine. While McNish writes action well, he just doesn't sell the weird throat-as-weapon concept. Neither weird noises as weapons nor ballet-loving, star-headed dog monsters are convincing.—Eric Norton, McMillan Memorial Library, Wisconsin Rapids, WI