A once popular teen, with the help of a surly school loner, must break a generational curse haunting her Egyptian bloodline in this intensely creepy YA horror novel full of sinister secrets yet buoyed by superb romcom undertones.
Seventeen-year-old Mina Mansour was only nine when her mother departed on "her first and last visit" back to her hometown in Egypt (Masr) and died in a car accident. Mina's father's silence about the matter, however, has always suggested to Mina that something is amiss. So, when she received a call from "a woman claiming to be [her] mother's younger sister" offering a free trip to Masr, she jumped at the chance to get answers. Instead, she returned home to California with a vicious curse: anyone alone with her is compelled to kill her. Now, to save herself, Mina self-isolates, ignoring her friends and even avoiding her father. Somehow, the only person immune to the curse's effects is 18-year-old, "harshly gorgeous, leather-clad" loner Jesse Talbot. As the teens work together to unravel the wicked truth hidden in Mina's bloodline, they also discover the beautiful, hidden sides to one another.
The layered, complex Where No Shadow Stays is American-Egyptian writer Sara Hashem's YA debut. Narratives from multiple generations intertwine with Mina's first-person account, which details both the visceral terror of being brutally, indiscriminately attacked and the weight of familial legacy. Mina speaks with unfiltered candor about the complexity of belonging to two cultures; her comparatively easy camaraderie with Jesse and their gloriously entertaining banter flawlessly scaffold a budding romance. Hashem (The Jasad Heir) gifts readers a high-stakes, genuinely scary YA thriller and a delightful love story in one. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer