At the beginning of this book, Boy Novak lives with her abusive father in Manhattan city. Nothing terribly unusual happens on the day she runs away, at twenty, never to return. She buys a bus ticket to the very last stop on the line and starts a new life in Flax Hills, a town of artisans and craftspeople. Boy has no skills, and ends up working a serious of jobs that introduce her to a strange circle: Webster, a girl obsessed with getting married; Mia, a journalist who will go way too far for a good story; and Arturo, a windowed jewelry maker with a beautiful daughter, Snow. Boy is inexorably drawn to both Arturo and Snow, and the fairy tale cottage they live in. But there are many strange things Boy can't control, and one of them seems to be this: if she settles down with Arturo, she will be the wicked step-mother in the story book of his daughter's life. Does she want that? Can she avoid it?

I wanted to like this book so much more than I actually did. It's a great concept- a collection of comics all by Indigenous authors and illustrators. It just didn't really come together.

This book is a masterpiece. Wimberly has woven together Shakespeare, hip-hop and Kurosawa with effortless ease into a new and stunning story. Rival gangs, the Montagues and Capulets, battle over their pride in the streets of 1980's New York, wielding samurai swords and deadly wits. Rosalyn snaps photos of the top duelists for a zine which reports the latest victories and defeats. Mercutio sprays graffiti murals under contested overpasses. Juliet smokes in the bathroom at her all-girls high school. And through it all stalks Tybalt, the Prince of Cats, cutting his way to the top of the duel ranks. If you thought Hamilton was revolutionary, read this.

Jessamy Harrison is eight years old at the start of this book, living in England, struggling with constant nightmares, fits of fever or other illness and nameless sense of fear that causes her to fall down screaming. Her mother takes Jess and her father to Nigeria, for their first visit to her family and the house where she grew up. Jess is delighted with her Nigerian grandfather, but even more intrigued by a ragged girl, Tilly, who seems to be living in an abandoned outbuilding. Tilly can do astonishing things- open locked doors, turn invisible, steal things, and possibly place curses on people who upset her. Jess is sad to say goodbye to her new friend when she returns home but Tilly turns up at her door in England. For a while, Tilly seems like Jess's best friend. But Tilly is bitter and her vengeance is harsh. Soon, this girl who seemed like a gift begins to haunt Jess and plague her worst nighttime terrors.

This was Helen Oyeyemi's first novel, finished when she was only 19, and it shows some first novel weaknesses. I finished the book, and was very interested by some parts, but I feel like Oyeyemi explored many of the same themes (haunted twins, a blurring of reality into madness, cross-cultural clashes of beliefs) with more richness and maturity in her later novel White is for Witching. I'd recommend that one, or her brilliant short story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours over this one.