I’m not really a horror reader, but I loved Sara Hashem’s Scorched Throne duology so much that I decided I had to give this one a try. And I’m so glad I took the chance because it was great! I was hooked from the opening line: “No one has tried to kill me yet today.”
So narrates main character Mina, an Egyptian American high school senior who recently returned from a visit to Egypt. Something dark came back with her, and whenever she is alone with someone, the person becomes possessed and tries to kill her. She teams up with the (mildly clichéd) school bad boy Jesse to try to break this curse.
Mina is a great character. She is witty and sarcastic, which we learn is a change from the cheerful, optimistic girl she was before the curse, but we also learn that some of that former presentation was a way to try to fit into a small, White town as a person of color. She’s funny (e.g., describing her father as having the “social skills of a six-hundred-year-old turtle”) and smart (applying to speak at graduation), and I enjoyed reading from her perspective.
While Mina’s character work is great, it was the plot that especially kept me engaged. There’s the mystery of just what it is that came back with Mina and why. We learn some of that through flashbacks from her mother’s POV growing up in Egypt and from flashbacks of Mina’s own visit there. I really wanted to see how those questions would get answered, and it was difficult to put the book down.
The ending was not quite what I had hoped for, or even expected, though this could be simply that I am unused to reading horror books and had unrealistic expectations for the kind of emotions I would be left with. It was a fitting ending, though. This book has solidly cemented Sara Hashem as an auto-read author for me. I’m looking forward to the day her next book (already announced) becomes available for pre-order. 4.25 stars.
