What grows in the dark

Brigit and Ian have leveraged Brigit's childhood tragedy--her sister Emma's disappearance and death in their small hometown in Virginia 16 years ago--into an online paranormal-investigation show. Brigit has been the star and Ian the cameraman as they help people rid themselves of troublesome spirits in exchange for a few minutes of internet fame. However, when Emma's ex-girlfriend calls Brigit back home after two more teens have disappeared into the woods, Brigit must finally confront the horrors of her past, the monster in the woods, and the part she played in its reign of terror. The book opens with an unease that builds to outright disturbing and features both strong LGBTQ representation and a compelling combination of lies, secrets, and twists. Readers will be drawn in quickly, but it is Brigit and Ian and their alternating narrations that will keep them turning the pages. A solid debut that will appeal to fans of small towns with monstrous secrets hiding in the woods, like Hex, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (2016), and Jackal, by Erin E. Adams (2022).

In Evans's suspenseful horror debut, a pair of fraudulent paranormal investigators are called in to examine a real haunting. Sixteen years ago, Brigit Weylan's older sister, Emma, was found dead in an apparent suicide outside the woods where the girls once played. Soon after, Brigit left town for good. Now she lives on the road with her friend, Ian, conning people by faking supernatural happenings and then swooping in as experts. Ian, who films their so-called investigations and uploads them to YouTube, believes they'd have a hit show on their hands if they could just get a network pickup. Then Brigit gets a call from Emma's former girlfriend, now a police detective, informing her that two teens have disappeared in the same woods where Emma died, followed by strange, seemingly paranormal occurrences. Though Brigit doesn't want to return home, Emma offers to pay, and she can't resist the money. Upon arrival, she and Ian find that the teens' disappearance is directly connected to Emma's death. The more they investigate, the more the forest comes alive--and it wants Brigit. Evans gets the pacing of this chiller just right. Skin-crawling and unpredictable, this is sure to please horror fans. Agent: Erica Bauman, Aevitas Creative. (Mar.)