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Bedtime Stories: The Shadow Society

Post by Mark T. Locker.

The Shadow Society by Marie Rutkoski.

Nothing in Darcy Jones’s life has ever been simple. Or normal. Or stable. Left outside of a Chicago firehouse at an early age, she has been in and out of foster homes for most of her life, and her earliest years are a complete blank. She has alway chosen to leave the past forgotten, but when a mysterious boy shows up at her high school, she suddenly finds herself wondering about who she is, who she was, and why this young man seems to be the key to understanding it all.

When this mysterious young man, with whom she has been working on an English project, slaps strange flame-filled cuffs on her and calls her “Shade” I think Darcy realizes that she is about to learn a whole lot about herself. And when she manages to vanish into thin air and flee her captor, I think she realizes that what she learns will be pretty darn interesting.

This is the first novel by Marie Rutkoski outside of her Petra Kronos trilogy, whose third installment was released about a year ago. It is a much more complex novel than the Petra Kronos books, partly because it seems less evocative of other teen fantasy novels, partly because the main character is older, more damaged, less sure of what to do. It’s not the most incredible book ever written; nevertheless, I had a hard time putting it down at night.

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