One girl must uncover secrets of the past to save her friend from a terrible curse in this dark and mesmerizing story of love, revenge, and redemption inspired by the myth of Medusa.
Milla knows two things to be true: Demons are real, and fear will keep her safe.
Milla’s whole world is her family’s farm. She is never allowed to travel to the village and her only friend is her beloved older brother, Niklas. When a bright-eyed girl named Iris comes to stay, Milla hopes her loneliness might finally be coming to an end. But Iris has a secret she’s forbidden to share: The village is cursed by a demon who possesses girls at random, and the townspeople live in terror of who it will come for next.
Now, it seems, the demon has come for Iris. When Iris is captured and imprisoned with other possessed girls, Milla leaves home to rescue her and break the curse forever. Her only company on the journey is a terrible new secret of her own: Milla is changing, too, and may soon be a demon herself.
Suspenseful and vividly imagined, The Cold Is in Her Bones is a novel about the dark, reverberating power of pain, the yearning to be seen and understood, and the fragile optimism of love.
Praise for THE COLD IS IN HER BONES
“A dark and enchanting tale about friendship, pain, revenge, and the power of love, The Cold Is in Her Bones is the perfect read for Greek mythology fans and YA readers alike.” ―Bustle
“Fiercely written and beautifully feminist, The Cold is in Her Bones reminds us of the power of loyalty and love in the face of ignorance and fear. I loved this tale of dangerous girls with wild hair and tangled hearts.” ―Lisa Maxwell, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Magician
“A fresh, eerily compelling tale of betrayal, revenge, and the ties that bind. When van Arsdale paints a world, you can feel the fog against your skin.” ―Elly Blake, New York Times bestselling author of The Frostblood Saga
- The Salem Witch Trials. This was during a time when people lived in constant fear. Women were supposed to remain docile and obedient. Those who weren’t could have been accused of witchcraft.
- The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is about the slow declining mental faculties of a strong-willed woman. It is about how a family member would lock away a female loved one for her “safety”. The story is also a take on postpartum depression.
- The mental asylums that began in the 1700s and kept going up to 1970s and 1980s. We all have heard stories about the “treatments” these facilities were known for. But did you know that one of the first investigative reporters actually posed insane and went through the process of one of these hospitals was actually a woman? Nellie Bly was ahead of her time and though her experiences helped the system a bit, the system was still not great.
These were just some of the things going through my mind as I was reading. This isn’t a lighthearted book. It’s about inner strength, acceptance, and society’s way of hurting what they are afraid of instead of listening and learning. We are always fighting against one another. We should instead fight the fear and pain and learn from it.
That was the take away I had from this book and if I could rate it higher than a five, I would. I want to thank Peternelle van Arsdale for this book. It is like looking at a painting in an art museum; you have so many different things to look at that just one aspect unfolds another.
The only downside is that I feel all of this might go past some readers. I’m not sure they will see the historical parallels and I’m not sure they will go through the pages and feel a profound moment. This isn’t a journey where a chosen girl goes to find romance and saves the world. This is a girl who just tries to save the one person she was close to and learns to forgive.
Final Rating: 5/5 but so much more.
Peternelle van Arsdale grew up in Newark, New Jersey, where she attended public school through the eighth grade. After that she attended three high schools in three different towns in four years, was deeply unpopular, and counted the seconds until graduation. She majored in English literature at Bryn Mawr College, and then landed in book publishing, thinking it was a good way to be paid to do what she liked to do anyway (she was only partly wrong). She worked her way up from editorial assistant to executive editor of adult fiction and nonfiction, and eventually struck out on her own as an independent editor.
Her first young adult novel, The Beast Is an Animal, is being developed by Amazon Studios for a feature film produced by Ridley Scott’s Scott Free and directed by Bert & Bertie. Her essays have been published by LitHub, Hypable.com, and Culturefly, and her short fiction has been published by The Whitefish Review.
Her second novel, The Cold is in Her Bones , will be published in January 2019. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she continues to edit and is at work on her third novel.
WEBSITE: http://www.peternellevanarsdale.com/
GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15087311.Peternelle_van_Arsdale
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/PeternellevanArsdaleauthor/
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/peternellevanarsdale/
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