Our Wicked Histories by Amy Goldsmith: Review by Colleen Mondor
Our Wicked Histories, Amy Goldsmith (Delacorte Press 978-0-583-70395-3, $19.99, 384pp, hc) July 2024. Cover by Marcela Bolivar.
The heroine of Amy Goldsmith’s Our Wicked Histories is Meg, a scholarship student at an exclusive private art school. In the opening pages she is still reeling from an episode a few months earlier when, at a school dance, she made a stupid drunken mistake that obliterated her social life (she has lost all of her friends) and left her facing expulsion if she can’t get her victim to intercede with school administration. Greyscott is the dream for Meg and her mother, the place she simply cannot lose, and whatever she has to do to stay there, whatever the humiliation or punishment she must receive, well, Meg is prepared to do it. When her very rich, very popular, former best friend Lottie invites her to a Halloween weekend at her family’s vacation home, Wren Hall, it seems like the answer to Meg’s prayers. Everyone she needs to get on her side will be there including, most crucially, Laure, the girl she hurt at the dance. In one weekend, Meg can make all the necessary apologies and get everyone back on her side. But Wren Hall, in an isolated part of rural Ireland, is not as Lottie described, and no one else knew Meg was coming or wants her there. Collectively, the other teens are annoyed and spoiled, and they happily belittle Meg at every turn. If this is her penance, it’s going to be a long, brutal weekend. Then she learns about the banshee and Wren Hall’s haunted past, and someone gets hurt. Suddenly, Meg must face a killer who seems determined to pick them off one at a time with her as a particular target.
Oh, this book is fun! From the opening pages with a possible banhsee’s scream (please refer to Ray Bradbury’s short story of that name if you need to learn more about banshee lore), to Meg’s slow exposure to one unsettling development after another, Goldsmith ratchets up the tension like a master. The group’s history is revealed through a series of flashbacks, Meg’s complicated relationship with Seb, Lottie’s twin brother, is slowly revealed and just what went down at that dance which blew up her life proves to be a catalyst not only for everything wrong in the past, but all the dangers of the present. Through a ton of passive-aggressive (and outright hostile) interactions through the weekend, Meg begins to question just how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice, to stay in a school that is diminishing her more by the minute. (Readers will answer this question ahead of Meg, but seeing her get there is worth the wait.) All of that would be tough enough, but there are also the suspicious local residents, the possible ghost, the tragic accident years earlier (was it an accident?) and that problematic banshee. (It’s not always the wind when you hear someone screaming!) Should Meg just put on her Halloween costume and smile through the nightmare, or is it time to accept that things are not okay at Wren Hall? (Things are really not okay. Not. At. All.) Settle in, get comfortable, and plan for a very late night, as Our Wicked Histories is a tough title to put down. Goldsmith knows exactly what she is doing with the thrills and the chills, and I couldn’t get enough of Meg’s very scary Irish weekend.
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This review and more like it in the December 2024 issue of Locus.
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