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| Perma-Bound Edition ©2023 | -- |
| Publisher's Hardcover ©2023 | -- |
| Paperback ©2023 | -- |
Mature Content 
Black people. Canada. Fiction.
Dead. Fiction.
Mansions. Fiction.
Mothers and daughters. Fiction.
Sexual abuse. Fiction.
Spirit possession. Fiction.
Supernatural. Fiction.
A haunted mansion is the site of unmistakable horrors and horrific mistakes.Seventeen-year-old Daisy Odlin recounts constantly seeing, feeling, and fearing the dead; visions of the dead lying atop her are paired with memories of an abusive 21-year-old ex-boyfriend, betraying an unrelenting sadness that Daisy theorizes the dead feed on. With an estranged father and a volatile relationship with her mother, Daisy, whose family has origins in Trinidad and Tobago, doesn't resist when an opportunity arises for mother and daughter to leave Toronto for northern Ontario and an inherited home. A decade later, Black film student Brittney is investigating what actually happened to Daisy, her mother, and the notoriously deadly house for the web series Haunted. Brittney's own abusive mother was a guest there after Daisy's mother turned it into an Airbnb, and it was a positive turning point that she wrote about in a bestselling memoir that put the so-called Miracle Mansion on the map. In parallel narratives, Brittney and Daisy-with the help of a documentary filmmaker and psychic, respectively-seek truths while struggling with the realities of their respective mothers. The paranormal logistics are complex, and while Daisy is at the center of it all, Brittney's investigation cuts through to discover layers upon layers of trauma that imbue the house with its supposed supernatural, if not psychological, power. As the saying goes, haunted people haunt people.A story that is careful to make its ghosts and monsters painfully real. (author's note, content warnings) (Thriller. 14-18)
School Library Journal Starred Review (Wed Jul 05 00:00:00 CDT 2023)Gr 10 Up— Seventeen-year-old Daisy, with ancestors from Trinidad and Tobago, has always been able to see dead people, but when she moves from Toronto into an inherited mansion with her mom, the ghosts inside invade her life in a completely new way. Daisy is hoping the fresh start will be a chance to put her most recent toxic relationship with an older man behind her, but instead she is thrust into a haunted house with a monstrous will of its own. The house feels like an evil character from a Stephen King novel, though the true villains in this story are more likely to use their power to groom, rape, and gaslight their teenage victims. Readers wary of maggots and slaughtered animals should also be prepared for some of the vivid imagery present. Because the house leaves a dead Black girl in its wake, a decade later the creative team behind a popular haunted house web series decides they will investigate to shine a light on the lack of concern over "Forgotten Black Girls." Even with the large cast of characters and dual narratives, Sambury carefully and clearly builds an intricate story that uses metaphors of gardening to spotlight the cyclical nature of sexual violence while providing a genuinely terrifying haunted house ghost story. VERDICT An excellent choice for fans of sophisticated horror that includes both paranormal and real-life terrors, such as Elana K. Arnold's Red Hood .— Carrie Shaurette
ALA Booklist (Wed Jul 05 00:00:00 CDT 2023)On the heels of her boyfriend's betrayal, Daisy and her mom get a long-awaited call: they've inherited the "Miracle Mansion" of Daisy's mother's teenage summers and can finally move out of Toronto to start an Airbnb. In a parallel story line set 10 years in the future, podcast host Brittney and her partner Jayden investigate the same mansion for an episode in the newest season of their ghost-story YouTube show. As Daisy contends with her ability to see ghosts and all the things her mom isn't telling her, Brittney and Jayden unravel Daisy's story from the end, until the two narratives collide in a haunting revelation. This complex, multifaceted story is not for the faint of heart; its 500-plus pages are packed with visions of dead people and different types of abuse. The deeply creepy mansion delicately ties together two main characters who, despite being separated by 10 years and having very different backgrounds, are both fierce and compellingly imperfect, though one is perhaps less reliable than the other. A must-read.
Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)A haunted mansion is the site of unmistakable horrors and horrific mistakes.Seventeen-year-old Daisy Odlin recounts constantly seeing, feeling, and fearing the dead; visions of the dead lying atop her are paired with memories of an abusive 21-year-old ex-boyfriend, betraying an unrelenting sadness that Daisy theorizes the dead feed on. With an estranged father and a volatile relationship with her mother, Daisy, whose family has origins in Trinidad and Tobago, doesn't resist when an opportunity arises for mother and daughter to leave Toronto for northern Ontario and an inherited home. A decade later, Black film student Brittney is investigating what actually happened to Daisy, her mother, and the notoriously deadly house for the web series Haunted. Brittney's own abusive mother was a guest there after Daisy's mother turned it into an Airbnb, and it was a positive turning point that she wrote about in a bestselling memoir that put the so-called Miracle Mansion on the map. In parallel narratives, Brittney and Daisy-with the help of a documentary filmmaker and psychic, respectively-seek truths while struggling with the realities of their respective mothers. The paranormal logistics are complex, and while Daisy is at the center of it all, Brittney's investigation cuts through to discover layers upon layers of trauma that imbue the house with its supposed supernatural, if not psychological, power. As the saying goes, haunted people haunt people.A story that is careful to make its ghosts and monsters painfully real. (author's note, content warnings) (Thriller. 14-18)
Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews (Wed Jul 05 00:00:00 CDT 2023)
School Library Journal Starred Review (Wed Jul 05 00:00:00 CDT 2023)
ALA Booklist (Wed Jul 05 00:00:00 CDT 2023)
Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)
CHAPTER ONE DAISY
There were two stories of how I was named. One was what Mom told people. Never casually. Only if they asked.
It was a dream of a drive long enough that you strain not to doze off, mingled with the extra-sweet tang of wild blueberries.
All of Ontario seemed to be built along rough gray roads stretching seemingly forever into the distance, where rolling down your window meant breathing in the sharp smell of burned rubber and stinging asphalt. The sort of tar-black road that scorched your feet with its heat and left the scent on your heels, smoky and stained, lingering in the air.
In this dream, Mom pulled onto the shoulder, bright emergency blinkers flashing on an empty highway. When I was little, growing up in a city, it was hard to picture a place I knew to be packed and busy, suddenly devoid. Like a ghost town. Abandoned. With Mom as its only inhabitant.
She stepped over the squat metal barrier between expressway and earth, careful with the swollen bump of her belly. She walked into the wreckage of fallen trees, burnt branches crumbling to white ash that stuck to her fingers and still smelled of fire. That's where she found the blueberries. They grew in patches, short, small, and wild, alive in a field of death.
You could find the best blueberries after a burn, she'd say.
And there, in the midst of gathering the sweet fruit into the hem of her car-sweaty T-shirt, her tongue stained purple with juice, she found something else.
A daisy.
Inexplicably. In a place where only one plant seemed to grow was this other thing that shouldn't have survived.
That was where my name came from.
Now, the second story.
The one where Grandma whispered that of course a sixteen-year-old would name her kid after a flower. Which meant that the second story wasn't a story at all. Because that was the point, that there wasn't one.
That my name was nothing more than a pretty tattoo: permanent and meaningless.
Excerpted from Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
“A haunted house thriller packed with cryptic mystery, dark humor, and bone-chilling twists.” —Ryan Douglass, New York Times bestselling author of The Taking of Jake Livingston
The Haunting of Hill House meets Sadie in this “genuinely terrifying” (School Library Journal, starred review) psychological thriller following two teen girls navigating the treacherous past of a mysterious mansion ten years apart.
Daisy sees dead people—something impossible to forget in bustling, ghost-packed Toronto. She usually manages to deal with her unwanted ability, but she’s completely unprepared to be dumped by her boyfriend. So when her mother inherits a secluded mansion in northern Ontario where she spent her childhood summers, Daisy jumps at the chance to escape. But the house is nothing like Daisy expects, and she begins to realize that her experience with the supernatural might be no match for her mother’s secrets, nor what lurks within these walls…
A decade later, Brittney is desperate to get out from under the thumb of her abusive mother, a bestselling author who claims her stay at “Miracle Mansion” allowed her to see the error of her ways. But Brittney knows that’s nothing but a sham. She decides the new season of her popular Haunted web series will uncover what happened to a young Black girl in the mansion ten years prior and finally expose her mother’s lies. But as she gets more wrapped up in the investigation, she’ll have to decide: if she can only bring one story to light, which one matters most—Daisy’s or her own?
As Brittney investigates the mansion in the present, Daisy’s story runs parallel in the past, both timelines propelling the girls to face the most dangerous monsters of all: those that hide in plain sight.