At Bookslut Colleen Mondor reviews books for the very Bradburyesque time of year we’re entering: October Country. Included in that roundup are books by Neil Gaiman, Margo Lanagan, and my own One for Sorrow.
Here’s an excerpt:
What really impressed me about this book was how it was a familiar story on one level and yet completely unique on another. We have read stories about ghosts forced to relive their deaths over and over again, but in Barzak’s hands that old chestnut becomes Frances Wilkinson, a tortured, tormented and twisted ghost girl Adam meets who the author takes to a place few writers would dare. And Barzak wasn’t done when he revealed Frances’s ugly truth; he still had more to go.
One For Sorrow is deep and dark in different ways from the average coming-of-age tale. It takes readers to a place rarely visited with teen books and perfectly blends multiple genres to make a new kind of scary book; one that is all too damned believable. This is a debut novel for Barzak but reads as the work of an old soul.