The Girl

Title: The Girl

Author: Victory Witherkeigh

Genre: YA Fantasy

Thank you, NetGalley, for this book.

I’m not a huge YA fantasy fan, but I’m all in when a good one comes along. This was not it. I skimmed the last 25% just to get this one over. There is a place for teen drama in books, but this one couldn’t decide if it was about teen drama or fantasy or abuse or one of the other many genres it touches on.

From Goodreads: The parents knew it had been a mistake to have a girl. At birth, the girl’s long, elegant fingers wriggled and grasped forward, motioning to strangle the very air from her mother’s lungs. As she grew older, she grew more like her father, whose ancestors would dream of those soon to die. She walked and talked in her sleep, and her parents warded themselves, telling the girl that she was evil, unlovable, their burden to bear only until her eighteenth birthday released them. 

The average person on the streets of Los Angeles would look at the girl and see a young woman with dark chocolate eyes, curly long hair, and tanned skin of her Filipina heritage. Her teachers praised her for her scholarly achievements and extracurricular activities, from academic decathlon to cheer. 

The girl knew she was different, especially as she grew to accept that the other children’s parents didn’t despise them. Her parents whispered about their pact as odd and disturbing occurrences continued to happen around her. The girl thought being an evil demon should require the skies to bleed, the ground to tremble, an animal sacrifice to seal the bargain, or at least cause some general mayhem. Did other demons work so hard to find friends, do well on their homework, and protect their spoiled younger brother? 

The demon was patient. It could afford to wait, to remind the girl when she was hurt that power was hers to take. She needed only embrace it. It could wait. The girl’s parents were doing much of its work already.

If this were what the book was about, that would be a MUCH better book than it ended up being. But this was maybe 1/3 of the book. The rest was just unwarranted parental abuse and teenage drama. The reader isn’t clued into that abuse until over halfway through the book. And the abuse is a lot. Very verbal, emotional trauma. But the drama, oh my gosh, the drama. Whoooo… cares…..??? Sure, YA books are targeted to teens, but the drama felt so out of place in this book. It had the potential to be so much more. What a disappointment.