#Blog Tour #The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky #YA Thriller @Xpresso Book Tours @Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) @Macmillan

The Mary Shelley Club
Goldy Moldavsky
Published by: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Publication date: April 13th 2021
Genres: Thriller, Young Adult

New York Times-bestselling author Goldy Moldavsky delivers a deliciously twisty YA thriller that’s Scream meets Karen McManus about a mysterious club with an obsession for horror.

When it comes to horror movies, the rules are clear:

x Avoid abandoned buildings, warehouses, and cabins at all times.
x Stay together: don’t split up, not even just to “check something out.”
x If there’s a murderer on the loose, do not make out with anyone.

If only surviving in real life were this easy…

New girl Rachel Chavez turns to horror movies for comfort, preferring stabby serial killers and homicidal dolls to the bored rich kids of Manhattan Prep…and to certain memories she’d preferred to keep buried.

Then Rachel is recruited by the Mary Shelley Club, a mysterious society of students who orchestrate Fear Tests, elaborate pranks inspired by urban legends and movie tropes. At first, Rachel embraces the power that comes with reckless pranking. But as the Fear Tests escalate, the competition turns deadly, and it’s clear Rachel is playing a game she can’t afford to lose.

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Author Bio:

Goldy Moldavsky was born in Lima, Peru, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where she lives with her family. She is the New York Times–bestselling author of Kill the Boy Band and No Good Deed. Some of her influences include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the esteemed works of John Irving, and the Mexican telenovelas she grew up watching with her mother.

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My thoughts:

Loved it! Sooooo good...

First things first, I'm not a kind of person who would be overly enthusiastic about a blurb mentioning One of Us is Lying. Scream? now we are talking. Mary Shelley? oh, yes, please. I love Frankenstein (with its monumental influence on our popculture) and I love the story behind its creation. In this case, the publicist's description was spot on and I enjoyed every minute of this wild ride.

Rachel Chavez is the proverbial new girl in a new school. Something bad happened to her last year which made her mum and Rachel move and change their job and school respectively. The only thing Rachel's mum insists on is Rachel keeping up her grades (you begin to wonder what exactly happened to have sent her into a spin last year, right?) and make friends. Which she kind of does. She even gets dragged (not literally, we haven't started on the horror part, but we'll get there, don't get too comfortable) to a teenage party in an abandoned house. A prank is played and the scene is set. Rachel makes an enemy of a popular girl who won't stop spreading her unsolicited opinion of Rachel ('Freak!).

When Rachel finally confronts the prankster, she discovers the existence of the most mysterious and be default exclusive The Mary Shelley Club. Perhaps,she has finally found 'her own tribe', people who appreciate horror movie tropes in all their marvelous variety and see the genre the way Rachel does- as a cleansing mechanism to flush out all the wrong things in one's life, an injection of adrenaline and courage. Perhaps, this is her way to face what happened to her, the changes in herself and her biggest fear. Perhaps, she can belong. But first, she needs to pass the Fear Test, and this is where what seems an innocent game is going to get deadly serious. As it would in any decent horror movie....

The writing style is effortless and easy to follow. You get so immersed in what Rachel experiences that it is as if you've stepped into her life. Or at the very least, a brilliant horror movie. you are a bit edgy and suspicious,but you can't turn your eyes off the screen. Ups! I meant to say off the page...

Rachel is a likeable and relatable protagonist. Don't we all want to fit in and belong without sacrificing what makes us unique? How far would we go in this desire? How far would we push other people to get what we want and what would it do to us? Goldy Moldavsky masterfully renders this universal teenage angst in this exciting YA thriller.

Well-written, gripping, perceptive, The Mary Shelley is wickedly entertaining. I'm glad to have found a new author to watch out for- Goldy Moldavsky.

Thank you to Giselle from Xpresso Book tours, NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) for the review copy provided in exchange for an honest opinion.

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