The Children by Melissa Albert
Is artistic genius genetic or something bargained for?
What price would you pay for artistic genius? In The Children, Melissa Albert explores this to the extreme. Guinivere and Ennis Sharpe live under the legacy of their mother’s books. She took their names and likenesses and wrote a series of books that have a cult-like following. This is what her children both despise and endure. Guin bolsters their legend and writes a memoir about their nontraditional childhood. Her brother Ennis never speaks of it, or to his sister since their parents died in a horrific fire. There are clues about the house and the fire that drip through the plot. Ennis is a successful installation artist and there is something otherworldly about his art. Is it genetic or something bargained for? Albert teases and torments till the finale. You have to read to find out all the secrets.
If you like stories that take something familiar and reveal that something much stranger has been hiding underneath, read The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch next. Lydia has some secrets of her own, and the supernatural world hiding inside a story you thought you knew makes this a wonderfully strange companion read. Read the review →
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