Local Gods by Melinda Salisbury (Her Dark Wings) is a twisty, mystical, supernatural folk-horror novel about a teen whose town's fate drops into her hands when she meets its dying god.
"White, slim, conventionally pretty" 17-year-old Sylvie fled her privileged life in Pine Ridge Hollow when the FBI raided her home seeking her missing father on fraud and embezzlement charges. Six months later, Sylvie returns to her hometown, which has fallen into disrepair as the debts of those who were victimized by her dad's investment schemes mount. Now she and her mother live in semi-exile in a half-finished railway station in the West Woods, where the bloodthirsty and "inexplicably" all-white wildlife eat the town's livestock and pets. There Sylvie meets a cryptid named Illican, with a human body, golden eyes, "black ridged horns erupting from its temples," and white hair. She realizes Illican is not, in fact, a cryptid but a horned god bound to the town. Sylvie is drawn to the deity but learns he is dying as the impoverished Pine Ridge Hollow fractures at the seams.
Salisbury expertly includes generational trauma, abandonment, and socioeconomics in a mystery heavily steeped in paranormal and folk horror. Bewildering scenes and creepy animals abound; Sylvie imagines "flaying herself down to the marrow" and dreams of a blossom growing out of her mouth and suffocating her. Salisbury pairs these unsettling intrusive thoughts with deliciously disturbing animal imagery: a single white deer devouring a snake in three bites, a yellow jacket smashing itself repeatedly against a window. These visceral, atmospheric sequences are the perfect backdrop for this absorbing small-town mystery about magic, rebirth, and longing to belong. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader