Who: Marianna BaerWhat: Frost
When: September 13th
Where: HarperTeen
Why: Premise
How: For Review
Leena Thomas’s senior year at boarding school begins with a shock: Frost House, her cozy dorm of close friends, has been assigned an unexpected roommate: confrontational, eccentric Celeste Lazar. But while Leena’s anxiety about a threat to her sanctuary proves valid, it becomes less and less clear whether the threat lies with her new roommate, within Leena’s own mind, or within the very nature of Frost House itself. Mysterious happenings in the dorm, an intense triangle between Leena, Celeste, and Celeste’s brother, and the reawakening of childhood fears, all push Leena to take increasingly desperate measures to feel safe. Frost is the story of a haunting. As to whether the demons are supernatural or psychological . . . well, which answer would let you sleep at night?
Okay, this book is going to take some explaining!
Frost is so creepy but not in a literally scary sense, but a psychological scary that leaves you with chills until you don't even know what's real and what isn't. Definitely do not recommend reading at night, people!
We come to the characters! See, I never really connected with Leena or Celeste or David. They were the main characters, but it was Frost House that was running the show (which I think, was really the whole point) and it has you gripped from the very first page. It's subtle. It's not gory and there's no raging ghost lunatic trying to murder everyone. Instead it's whispers in the dark, noises, things disappearing or breaking. So subtle, that by the end of the novel you don't even know whether or not it actually happened, or if Leena is just a plain unreliable narrator. I quite love unreliable narrators, because they bring you such a warped image of what's going on that it's like putting together a puzzle when they haven't even given you the right pieces in the first place (another example would be The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin). Everything seems to have some sort of semblance of an explainable and that's so... eerie. And that's what a good scary story is all about!
I found David to be quite...strange. I mean, in the beginning, him and Leena's budding romance was cute and adorable but halfway through the novel everyone is just...weird. You don't what anyone's intentions are and everyone looks like the bad guy and Leena has some seriously twisted thoughts from living at Frost House. I didn't like either of her friends but they didn't seem like very good friends, and I think Celeste was a total crazy.
Kind of a short review, but in the end: read this book for Halloween if you're in need of a eerie psychological story!
Happy Reading!
