Nightingale by Amy Lukavics
Harlequin Teen (September 2018)
352 pages; $12.91 hardcover; $9.99 e-book
Reviewed by Dave Simms
1951 isn’t the best time to be a teenage girl, especially if she doesn’t feel compelled to fit into the cookie-cutter demure housewife role that was the norm then. Talk about horror! Amy Lukavics follows up her frightening YA breakout The Wolves in the Walls with Nightingale, which readers may feel is on par with Sarah Pinborough with a plot that twists and turns until it constricts like a snake in the shadows.
June Hardie doesn’t fit in. Her family doesn’t seem to like her very much. The only time anyone pays her any mind is when stripping her of any self-confidence or training her for a stereotype she refuses to fit. Her happiness exists in the form of her science fiction stories, an escape that she prays will become a reality, a path out of the hell where she lives.
Something snaps one morning when her mother calls her “Nightingale” and suddenly displays a sweet side that doesn’t quite fit. June wakes up at Burrow Place Asylum, the Institution, a place that reminds one of a mix between One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Shutter Island.
The nurses and doctors shatter any reality June held onto, feeding her medication and eliciting visions that she knows can’t be real. Her fellow patients, or captives, warn her to keep a low profile and avoid the severe “treatment” that has caused others to disappear. Her roommate, Eleanor, believes herself to be dead but might be the closest thing to a friend in the world.
What starts off as a teen book for girls seeking identity morphs into a story for any age and any gender, as the plot snakes and curls into dead ends and pathways the reader couldn’t predict.When the ride comes to a halt, shock is an understatement, ala Pinborough’s latest thrillers and the aforementioned novels.
Definitely a breath of fresh air for YA thrillers, Lukavics knows how to snare her reader, pin them down, and scare the living crap out of them — not a simple task these days.
Highly recommended YA.
