October 1, 2021
In this debut novel, a young woman falls in love with an ethereal space boy who lands in the woods behind her house. Delta Wilding, 18, and her 16-year-old sister, Bee, have been struggling to make ends meet and understand what happened in their magical house, named the Wild West, ever since their father disappeared through a closet door months earlier. The sisters are used to being regarded as misfits in their strange, insular town of Darling, California, even as Delta's on-again, off-again relationship with Tag Rockford III, son of the wealthy, villainous mayor, creates friction for all around them. However, when Starling, a boy who appears to have fallen from the sky, lands in the woods behind their house, their rift with the town crescendos into not just mistrust, but actual danger. The plentiful swoon-y aspects of this supernatural love story will be best appreciated by fans of the genre, who will thrill to the vivid descriptions of Starling's messy curls and pale, blue-tinted, tattooed skin. Evoking a darkly whimsical tone and told mainly from Delta's third-person perspective with chapters interspersed from Bee's and Starling's points of view, this tale is an engrossing, languidly paced work of suspense exploring family and small-town dynamics and loyalties. The main human characters read as White. An earnest, slowly unfolding drama. (Paranormal romance. 13-18)
COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
October 25, 2021
For most of her life, Delta Wilding, 18, has lived with her paranormal-obsessed father, Roark, and sister, Bee, 16, in the Wild West, a semi-sentient house on the outskirts of Darling, Calif. Seventy-two days ago, however, Roark entered their hallway closet and disappeared. The girls have nobody to turn to—Darling’s residents despise the peculiar Wildings, and Mayor Tag Rockford wants a reason to run them out of town—so their only recourse is to lie low and hope their emergency funds last until Roark returns. When something lands in the Wildings’ woods, shaking the ground and illuminating the sky, Delta and Bee investigate. To their shock, they find extraterrestrial Starling Rust, who resembles a teenage boy but for glowing skin, black eyes, and a forked tongue. Taking him home to prevent others from discovering and exploiting him, the sisters clash regarding what to do next. If the worldbuilding is slightly flimsy and the villains cartoonish, Strychacz’s debut boasts evocative writing; a compelling love triangle between Delta, Starling, and Delta’s sometimes-boyfriend, 18-year-old Tag Rockford III; and a kaleidoscopic third-person narrative that adds complexity to the mostly cued-white cast. Ages 12–up.
November 1, 2021
Grades 9-12 In the small town of Darling, whispers of witchcraft and caustic unpleasantries circulate about the Wilding sisters and their missing, alien-obsessed father. Seventy-seven days after his disappearance, an earthquake shakes a star from the sky that falls into their woods in the form of a glowing teenage boy. Eighteen-year-old Delta is simultaneously petrified and mesmerized by the boy's prone form, and she makes a snap decision to carry him home--with the help of skeptical Bee. What unfolds is a character-driven story of love, possibility, fear, small-town prejudice, and teenage emotions cranked to 11. The mysterious boy, Starling, is just as bewildered by his sudden presence on Earth, and he unexpectedly finds himself experiencing humanlike emotions and a romance with Delta. As the girls endeavor to conceal Starling from hostile townsfolk, they must also take an honest look at their own hearts and actions. Debut author Strychacz dusts her novel with the supernatural as she puts humanity's beauty and ugliness on equal display, keeping this heartfelt story from slipping into sentimentality and sparkling all the more for it.
COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.