c.2025, Scholastic Press, $19.99, 368 pages
O ooooh, turn it up, you love that song! You know all the words to it, every note, every beat, every pause, and you never miss a chance to hear it. Even if you can’t carry a tune in a proverbial bucket, singing along with it makes your day. It just makes you so very happy – unless, as in the new book, “I Am Made of Death” by Kelly Andrew, hearing it makes you so very dead.
If Thomas Walsh hadn’t needed the job, he would’ve walked out of the interview in a heartbeat. But he didn’t.
No, because his mother was sick, his sister would soon attend college, and bills were stacked uncomfortably high on their kitchen counter, there he was. Sitting in a well-appointed office in a cavernous mansion, about to take a job as a sign language translator and glorified babysitter for an extremely spoiled but very beautiful young woman.
He didn’t want the job but at least he’d be well-paid.
As he eventually understood it, years ago, when she was very small, Vivienne Farrow fell into a crevasse while on holiday, and the trauma of it made her mute. She could hear, she could sign, but she would not speak. In days to come, she would also not let Thomas do his job. Escaping him seemed to be a game to her. She treated him with dark disdain. She seemed to be terrified of … something.
Vivienne wished she could scream at Thomas, at his earnestness and his persistence, but she didn’t dare. Because of the thing in the mirror and the monster inside her, her voice was deadly and she was tired of killing people, just so her stepfather could gain power.
Thomas was intriguing and she wanted him to kiss her but she couldn’t say it. Instead, she sang softly to another boy who was in her stepfather’s path, and then she was silent. … In a very big way, “I Am Made of Death” is a lot like an old-fashioned Gothic novel, complete with a half-empty mansion, edgy darkness, a dangerous stepparent, an elite private school and a tentative romance. Author Kelly Andrew doesn’t leave things like that, though; with a modern twist that gives the story more relevance for today’s reader, she takes all those classic Gothic bits and adds an outpouring of pure, eyes-narrow malevolence that’s genuinely scary, even if you happen to be a bit of a scoffer.
Crack this book open, in fact, and you’ll have to admit that you just can’t argue with the shivers you’ll get, and that it’s impossible to stay stoic when the evil in the plot here does things you won’t expect. Yeah. You’ve been warned.
You may find this book in the YA section of your library or bookstore, even though it’s perfectly appropriate for any horror novel fan ages 14 and up. If that’s you and you think you’re immune to a good scare, go ahead and look for “I Am Made of Death.” You might just change your tune.
— The Bookworm Sez
