Review: Ask the Dark

By Henry Turner
Available now from Clarion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Review copy

Henry Turner's debut novel ASK THE DARK is about a boy who encounters a serial killer, but it isn't straight horror.  At the Houston Teen Book Con, Turner said HUCKLEBERRY FINN was a huge influence on this novel, and I can really see that.

Billy Zeets used to be pretty wild, vandalizing people's cars and egging homes and more.  It's earned him a bad reputation even though he's managed to mostly turn himself around.  His mother died and his dad got sober, but an accident left him disabled and unable to work.  It's up to Billy and his sister to get the money to keep their house out of foreclosure, and his sister is really pinning it on Billy. 

The kids in town are on curfew because boys have been disappearing, and the first two to disappear have been found murdered.  But Billy just can't stay inside.  He's always roamed the neighborhood in the dark.  And he's started to realize that he sees things when he roams.  That maybe he has the pieces he needs to find the killer.  He needs proof, however, because no one will trust him.

I really enjoyed ASK THE DARK.  Billy's voice is compelling, the dialect present but not distracting.  As a boys' adventure story gone wrong, it's aces.  I particularly like how much Turner leaves to the imagination.  There's no description of the bodies, nor of exactly what he does to the boys he's taken.  Billy alludes to things, is traumatized by things, but he wants to maintain some privacy.  And imagining what might've happened is both scarier and without the unpleasantness of those authorial descriptions of torture that seem to into it.

Those looking for a horror story or thriller might be disappointed by ASK THE DARK.  But it is a terrific dark coming of age tale, a boy finding his mettle in the worst circumstances possible.  Turner has a very developed sense of character voice for a debut author, and I look forward to his future works.

Event Report: The Greater Houston Teen Book Convention

This past Saturday, April 11, the annual Greater Houston Teen Book Con was held at Alief Taylor High School, sponsored by the Alief Education Foundation, Blue Willow Bookshop, Follet Library Resources, Mackin Educational Resources, Escue & Associates, and more.

One thing I thought this book convention did especially well was their selection of authors.  There was a nice mix of big names, steadily working authors, and newbies.  Debut author Henry Turner's ASK THE DARK even came out the week of the event.  There was also a diverse mix of authors, which is particularly important in Houston, currently the most diverse city in the US.  Our students need to see that someone like them can have a career as an author.  As Ally Carter said in "The Secrets That Bind Us" panel, just knowing S.E. Hinton was a teen girl from Oklahoma opened her mind to the possibility of writing professionally, and every kid deserves that.  The diverse authors included Jason Rynolds, Aisha Saeed (Vice President of We Need Diverse Books), Lydia Kang, David Levithan, Guadalupe Garcia McCall, and Jen Wang.

I noticed a few areas for improvement.  One of the panels I attended was crowded and another was extremely crowded.  I like the idea of teens getting to see as many authors as possible, but I think more smaller panels would help spread people out.  Most of the panels included five authors.  Another was that they stopped selling refreshments before the closing speech, at which point the event was supposed to go on for another two hours.  I know I wanted to buy a bottle of water and just used the vending machines instead.  I think many people could've still used a drink and a small snack at that point.  I do give the event props for having multiple food trucks during the lunch hours.  That was delicious.

I was a little late getting to the event because I had trouble finding Alief Taylor High School.  (David Levithan assured me that his escort got lost on the way too.)  The first panel I attended was "The Secrets That Bind Us" with Ally Carter, Henry Turner (who has the voice of a late-night DJ), Lindsay Cummings, and Justine Larbalestier.  They briefly introduced their books and then launched into a Q&A.  I was particularly interested in Cummings' story - she was bedridden for three years and did little other than read and write.  She wrote THE MURDER COMPLEX when she was eighteen because MOCKINGJAY made her so angry.  (I read it for this year's Cybils; it's a good book.)  They had a variety of opinions on plot twists.  Turner works his out in revision; Carter likes them best if they surprise even her; and Cummings plans them first because they're her favorite part.  None of them liked rereading their work.  When Carter needs to remember a continuity detail, she likes to ask Twitter and ask her fans to tell her if she's mentioned something before.