Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

Nineteen-year-old Laurel and her friends grapple with a curse on their town in this Southern gothic debut.In the small farming town of Dry Valley, Kentucky, Laurel faces her family legacy. Her mother had strange gifts before her mysterious death in their old well, leaving Laurel to grow up orphaned (and with a less useful gift: As a taxidermist, Laurel can read death stories from bones). When she and her best friends–turned–farm co-workers discover a grisly scene by the reopened well, it's only the beginning of the seemingly impossible-and increasingly dangerous-happenings. While confronting the past, Laurel and her friends, all distinctly drawn, also look to the future and who they want to be-for Laurel and Ricky, it's a charmingly bristling courtship dance. For Laurel's best friend, Isaac, and Ricky's brother, Garrett, it's more complicated. Garrett, happily a country boy, loves Isaac, but Isaac can't let himself love Garrett back as, to survive and escape Dry Valley (and an abusive situation), he knows he must leave. The characters, who default to White, are easy to get invested in as personal stakes climb so high that survival isn't a given. Told in the third-person, the novel's poetic language is atmospheric and evocative. Grounding depictions of the natural world are as vivid and lush as the descriptions of haunting horrors that are beautiful in their gruesomeness. These passages never slow the plot and frequently enhance the tension and suspense.In Kilcoyne, YA horror has found a new standard-bearer. (Horror. 13-18)

Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)

Nineteen-year-old Laurel and her friends grapple with a curse on their town in this Southern gothic debut.In the small farming town of Dry Valley, Kentucky, Laurel faces her family legacy. Her mother had strange gifts before her mysterious death in their old well, leaving Laurel to grow up orphaned (and with a less useful gift: As a taxidermist, Laurel can read death stories from bones). When she and her best friends–turned–farm co-workers discover a grisly scene by the reopened well, it's only the beginning of the seemingly impossible-and increasingly dangerous-happenings. While confronting the past, Laurel and her friends, all distinctly drawn, also look to the future and who they want to be-for Laurel and Ricky, it's a charmingly bristling courtship dance. For Laurel's best friend, Isaac, and Ricky's brother, Garrett, it's more complicated. Garrett, happily a country boy, loves Isaac, but Isaac can't let himself love Garrett back as, to survive and escape Dry Valley (and an abusive situation), he knows he must leave. The characters, who default to White, are easy to get invested in as personal stakes climb so high that survival isn't a given. Told in the third-person, the novel's poetic language is atmospheric and evocative. Grounding depictions of the natural world are as vivid and lush as the descriptions of haunting horrors that are beautiful in their gruesomeness. These passages never slow the plot and frequently enhance the tension and suspense.In Kilcoyne, YA horror has found a new standard-bearer. (Horror. 13-18)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Nineteen-year-old white-cued Laurel Early battles supernatural forces on her family’s tobacco farm in Kilcoyne’s visceral horror debut. Laurel’s late mother Anna, who was a pariah in their rural Kentucky town, used her magic to grow healthy crops. The magic Laurel inherited, she believes, is less practical: when she touches a deceased animal’s body, she sees its death. After dropping out of college in Ohio, she returns home to help her uncle Jay run the farm alongside best friends Isaac, Ricky, and Garrett, all coded white. Increasingly strange and terrifying events—animals found brutally killed but uneaten, a giant monster made of bone, and Anna’s ghost issuing warnings—prompt Laurel to consult local outcast Christine, who reluctantly helps Laurel harness her magic. Laurel and Ricky’s combative romance and Isaac and Garrett’s tentative courtship are expertly developed, and their complex relationships with the “mean-mouthed and close-minded” townsfolk, the land itself, and each other are realistically thorny. Using an ominous third-person perspective, grisly horror elements, and distinct setting, Kilcoyne delivers an exceptional examination of life, death, and grief teeming with beauty and menace. Ages 13–up. Agent: Erin Clyburn, Jennifer De Chiara Literary. (July)