Wake the Bones: A Novel (Hardcover)
"YA horror has found a new standard-bearer." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Dark, gripping, and gorgeous, Wake the Bones will lead you into the woods and keep you up late. As lush and sweltering as a Kentucky summer... Elizabeth Kilcoyne is a force.” - Gwenda Bond, New York Times bestselling author
The sleepy little farm that Laurel Early grew up on has awakened. The woods are shifting, the soil is dead under her hands, and her bone pile just stood up and walked away.
After dropping out of college, all she wanted was to resume her life as a tobacco hand and taxidermist and try not to think about the boy she can’t help but love. Instead, a devil from her past has returned to court her, as he did her late mother years earlier. Now, Laurel must unravel her mother’s terrifying legacy and tap into her own innate magic before her future and the fate of everyone she loves is doomed.
Elizabeth Kilcoyne’s Wake the Bones is a dark, atmospheric debut about the complicated feelings that arise when the place you call home becomes hostile.
"Seething with shadows, summer, and uniquely southern magic, Wake the Bones is a powerful debut that captures the ache of home being a place you simultaneously love and loathe." - Hannah Whitten, New York Times bestselling author of For the Wolf
"...atmospheric and evocative. Grounding depictions of the natural world are as vivid and lush as the descriptions of haunting horrors that are beautiful in their gruesomeness... In Kilcoyne, YA horror has found a new standard-bearer." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Using an ominous third-person perspective, grisly horror elements, and distinct setting, Kilcoyne delivers an exceptional examination of life, death, and grief teeming with beauty and menace." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Dark, gripping, and gorgeous, Wake the Bones will lead you into the woods and keep you up late. As lush and sweltering as a Kentucky summer... Elizabeth Kilcoyne is a force.” - Gwenda Bond, New York Times bestselling author
"Raw, emotional, and deliciously gross, Wake the Bones is a read that will cling to your subconscious long after its final page." - Lauren Blackwood, New York Times bestselling author of Within These Wicked Walls
"Deliciously vile and viciously emotional, Wake the Bones is a debut you'll want to savor but will be forced to devour whole. Kilcoyne richly imagines a world where life and death are all tangled together, and love and loss are the true magic. I was held captive to the last haunting page and I hoped there was no release." - Courtney Gould, author of The Dead and the Dark
"Wake the Bones is an eerie southern gothic with dark magic, haunting atmosphere, and an engaging plot that kept my eyes glued to the pages." - Alexis Henderson, author of The Year of the Witching
"With atmosphere as close and thick as summer heat, Wake the Bones is an unflinchingly gruesome delight. Kilcoyne’s lush, spellbinding prose kept me racing through the pages—and examines the ways small-town horrors soak into the very earth." - Allison Saft, New York Times bestselling author of A Far Wilder Magic
"Seething with shadows, summer, and uniquely southern magic, Wake the Bones is a powerful debut that captures the ache of home being a place you simultaneously love and loathe." - Hannah Whitten, New York Times bestselling author of For the Wolf