July 18, 2022
Living in Eastport, Mass., the country’s “most cursed city,” is like celebrating Halloween every day, but 12-year-old narrator Mallory Denton, an aspiring travel photographer, doesn’t enjoy the unending festivities. Transplanted from Chicago, she struggles to adjust to the “quaint, yet foreboding” town, which revels in its supernatural reputation, hosting monthly parades, boasting shops filled with ghoulish garb, and celebrating the beloved 200-year-old legend of Molly Flanders McMulligan Marshall. Known as Sweet Molly, the resident cursed Eastport after her brother, a fishing boat captain, died at sea during a dangerous storm. While Mallory’s parents embrace the town’s macabre history, serving gravestone-shaped pancakes at their purportedly haunted, cemetery-adjacent restaurant, the tween endures nightmares of a frightening hag intent on harming her. As the October anniversary of Sweet Molly’s curse nears, Mallory’s constant nightmares take a turn when a wild-eyed woman appears, determined to unleash her wrath upon the town at whose insistence Sweet Molly’s brother set sail. Told through Mallory’s resolute first-person voice, Currie’s (What Lives in the Woods) middle grade debut brims with tension, spine-tingling terror, and convincing characters bravely facing a supernatural dilemma. Characters cue as white. Ages 8–12. Agent: Shannon Hassan, Marsal Lyon Literary.