*Starred Review* Since her stepmother's recent death, 17-year-old Briony Larkin knows that if she can keep two secrets that she is a witch and that she is responsible for the accident that left Rose, her identical twin, mentally compromised and remember to hate herself always, no other harm will befall her family in their Swampsea parsonage at the beginning of the twentieth century. The arrival of Mr. Clayborne, a city engineer, and his university-dropout son, Eldric, makes Briony's task difficult. Clayborne's plan to drain the swamp has made the Old Ones unhappy, particularly the Boggy Mun, who has plagued the village's children with swamp cough in retaliation. When Rose's lingering illness turns into a cough, Briony knows that she must do whatever it takes, even revealing her secrets, to save her sister. While thwarting the advances of an arsenic-addicted suitor, Briony must also deny her feelings for Eldric, even as he helps her solve the puzzle that has become her life. Exploring the powers of guilt and redemption, Billingsley (The Folk Keeper, 1999) has crafted a dark, chilling yet stunning world. Briony's many mysteries and occasional sardonic wit make her a force to be reckoned with. Exquisite to the final word.--Leeper, Angela Copyright 2010 Booklist

After too long of an absence, Billingsley (The Folk Keeper) returns with the quirky but rich tale of 17-year-old Briony, who is convinced that she's a witch. Not only is Briony responsible for her twin sister Rose's disabling fall from a swing years earlier, causing brain-damage, she also believes she caused her stepmother's death. The 20th century has arrived in backwater Swampsea, England, and with it such wonders as railroads, motorcars, and pumping stations to drain the bog. But the supernatural Old Ones are unhappy with technology and have sent a fever to punish the children of Swampsea, including Rose. Desperate to save her sister's life, Briony is torn between her painful belief in her own irredeemably evil nature and her attraction to handsome, newly arrived bad boy Eldric Clayborne. "How could I bear it, Eldric living with us, this non-child, this boy-man? I'd have to keep on my Briony mask.... I'd have to keep my tongue sharp and amusing. Already I was exhausted." Filled with eccentric characters-self-hating Briony foremost-and oddly beautiful language, this is a darkly beguiling fantasy. Ages 12-up. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Briony Larkin believes she should be hanged as a witch. After all, she can talk to the Old Ones in the Swampsea. She is also responsible for the death of her stepmother, as well as the fall that addled her twin sister's wits. Through her self-loathing, she is convinced that, having ruined so many lives, she must be punished. When the handsome, leonine Eldric arrives from London, Briony is attracted but fearful of destroying another relationship. Duerden creates a rich panoply of voices, from the sardonic main character to the wild denizens of the swamp, while at the same time ably conveying the richly layered language of Billingsley's text. Common Core Standard: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.5 Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

"Ooze and muck and the clean muddy smell of life" suffuse Billingsley's long-awaited third work of fiction, which mingles "Tam Lin," "Lord Randall," and its own swampy folklore into an entirely original concoction -- and which confirms, yet again, how aptly fairy tale expresses the emotional landscape of adolescence. And more: how exceptionally well Billingsley uses it to do so. Narrator Briony Larkin is a self-proclaimed witch. She believes that out of childish jealousy of the attention Stepmother lavished on her twin sister, Rose, she called up the Old Ones, and Rose was brain-damaged in a violent windstorm. She avers that she is also responsible for Stepmother's injuries in a tidal wave. "We mustn't ever tell your father," Stepmother said. Now Stepmother's dead, and Briony hates herself, has sacrificed her future to care for Rose, forbids herself the joys of her beloved swamp, and fears her outing (and subsequent hanging) as a witch. But when Eldric comes to board at the family parsonage, bringing a young man's energy and his "busy London blood pumping just inches away," she begins to dig up suppressed memories. Tart, sad, funny, passionate, sensuous -- Briony is all of these. As complex and tightly woven as her protagonist, Billingsley's plot involves mystery, murder, romance, ancient lore, family drama, and sisterly love. Her Swampsea setting is earthy, visceral, and alive, and for all the adolescent self-hatred depicted here, there's also a welcome hyperawareness of the physical world that Billingsley articulates with impressive poetic vigor. deirdre f. baker (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.