In Mindy McGinnis's YA horror tale, the ferocious What Rough Beast, a teen girl who was sexually assaulted, the boy she believes raped her, and the social-climbing girl who knows what really happened narrate an intensely damning novel of trust earned and broken.
Eighteen-year-old "pale" senior Ava woke up at a party with blue-eyed sheriff's son Micah standing over her. Ava had date-rape drugs in her system; instead of accusing Micah directly, she calls out all of her small town's "good" boys and their bad behavior, earning herself enemies. Fellow senior Hailey is the only person who knows who attacked Ava, but the blonde teen is "the type of poor that has to share bathwater with her mom" and certainly won't be speaking up. Telling the truth might mean jeopardizing Hailey's endgame with rich boyfriend Ethan; she plans to marry him and be set for life. Micah didn't hurt Ava, but he is worried about getting caught for a potential felony: he, Ethan, and other guys have an ongoing competition to fill an online folder with nudes from girls at school, including minors. Meanwhile, Hailey waits for the "terrifying" object she released to clinch her future, and at a "depressing as hell" wildlife refuge, Ava incubates a mysterious egg that calms her but causes unsettling, unnatural side effects.
McGinnis (How Girls Are Made), already known for her unflinching brutality in realism, incorporates in this novel a family graveyard with cages over the tombs, gruesome bodily invasion, and a slew of abused, dying, deceased, or inexplicably undead animals. The narration switches first-person perspectives among the three emphatically confessional teens. Micah, who frequents a "dirtyslut" forum and realizes he is "untouchable" by the town's police, calls himself "a piece of shit" and struggles with crippling anxiety. Hailey thinks a girl's only escape from poverty is to "put out for boys who are better off"--boys like Ethan, who admits, "I just do what I want when I want to do it." Ava, "empty, carved out" after learning "girls are a consumable resource," brazenly attacks the sexism she sees and experiences. Ultimately, the young women rely on a frightening force to enact justice, showcasing the desperation misogyny can breed. This fantastically upsetting YA horror novel screams with feminine rage, awful deeds, and an accelerating dread about an ancient malevolent magic. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer
Shelf Talker: Small-town teens sabotage one another in a dramatic tangle of secrets, misdeeds, deceit, and sinister supernatural violence in this ferocious horror novel.