
A Creature of Moonlight by Rebecca Hahn
Rebecca Hahn caught my interest one paragraph into her debut YA novel A Creature of Moonlight:
All summer long the villagers have been talking of the woods. Even those living many hills away can see it: their crops are disappearing; their land is shrinking by the day. We hear story after story. One evening a well will be standing untouched, a good twenty feet from the shade, and when the farmer’s daughter goes to draw water in the morning, there will be nothing left but a pile of stones and a new tree or three growing out of the rubble. And all along beside it, the woods stretch on and on, where no woods were the night before.
There’s a creepiness to that idea — the woods moving in such a predatory fashion — but also a nice fabulist tone and a not-so-creepy storytelling voice that won me over immediately. And for the most part, Hahn made good on that early promise, crafting a quiet... Read More