Fiendish by Brenna Yovanoff {guest review}

Fiendish 
by Brenna Yovanoff
♦publisher: Razorbill
♦release date: August 14th, 2014
♦hardcover, 352 pages
♦intended audience: Young adult
♦source: from publisher for honest review
♦guest reviewer: Amy

Clementine DeVore spent ten years trapped in a cellar, pinned down by willow roots, silenced and forgotten.

Now she’s out and determined to uncover who put her in that cellar and why.

When Clementine was a child, dangerous and inexplicable things started happening in New South Bend. The townsfolk blamed the fiendish people out in the Willows and burned their homes to the ground. But magic kept Clementine alive, walled up in the cellar for ten years, until a boy named Fisher sets her free. Back in the world, Clementine sets out to discover what happened all those years ago. But the truth gets muddled in her dangerous attraction to Fisher, the politics of New South Bend, and the Hollow, a fickle and terrifying place that seems increasingly temperamental ever since Clementine reemerged.

Review: For ten years, Clementine lay buried in the cellar, eyes sewn shut, ensnarled in willow roots.  Bound by a magic so strong, no one even remembers her existence. Until one day a boy hears the faint magical pull of her breathing, unearthing not only a lost and forgotten girl but quite possibly the magical curse that may be responsible for trapping Clementine. 

Waking to a world that is scared of the craft that dwells in Wixby Hollow, Clementine rediscovers a world where magical beasts, hell hounds and fiends dwell. A coalition of townspeople are waiting to once again burn the magic from the Hollow to purify those who possess the craft, saving themselves from the plague that they call The Reckoning. This leaves Clementine to not only try to discover who trapped her in the cellar, but where she fits in a town where politics and truth are buried deeper than the cellar she has emerged from. 

Brenna Yovanoff, once again captures her readers with a gothic tale of horror and mystique. Painting a story that is both horrific as well as alluring, she combines old magic with witchcraft, unraveling a town that is built upon fear itself. Taking that which is seen as unnatural and wrong, it fits together to make a beautiful and enchanting story.

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Buy Fiendish:  BN.com  •  BookDepository  •  Indiebound