Alex Brown (Damned if You Do) ups the fright ante in her second anthology of YA horror, The House Where Death Lives, with a superb ensemble of nightmarish stories about demons of all kinds.
Every teen in this collection has faced death in some form. A teen bares her heart to the rotting specter of a deceased friend in a tragic tale by Tori Bovalino ("Bloom"), while a disquieting version of a girl's dead mother lurks in a hallway in "Vanishing Point" by Traci Chee. Other lives drift perilously close to their end. A starving girl locked in her attic befriends the invisible entity within her mirror in "Good Morning, Georgia" by Courtney Gould. Fear, though, is not a certainty for them all--some see darkness as a gift.
Unfettered emotions run rampant here: envy that breaks, bitterness like expired food, regret that can "destroy a person quicker than any poison." Blistering prose breathes life into malevolent beings, describing "vertebrae popping out of place" or breath "reeking of meat, raw or rotten." There is guilt like "a rabid beast with thick claws" and grief that feels like a "vacuum kind of silence." Contrasting this torrent of foreboding, however, is joyous love.
The tales are grouped according to the architecture of their shared setting (Attic, Down the Stairs, Second Floor, First Floor, Grounds) and connect in other, unsettling ways. Gay, bi, sapphic, and nonbinary characters are beautifully represented. Incorporated too are strong multicultural identities (Jamaican, Lebanese, Chinese, among them) and mythology. Compellingly horrifying. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer