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I freakingADORED this book. I'm really heartbroken that it's just a touch too mature for my local middle school booktalks.

It starts out as a quite realistic urban Canadian story about a black girl and her dance team drama. Her brother's been in prison for drugs, her parents are superstrict, and she's having serious friend troubles.

And I woulda been fine with it staying that way, to be perfectly honest. Scotch has a strong voice. She's got some serious conflict going on and I was interested in seeing how she was going to start to solve all of her issues. I never really believed in the romance, but I appreciated that the romantic relationship wasn't particularly important and Scotch's ambivalence was refreshing.

Then, while she's illegally at a club, all hell breaks loose. There are hints of it before (she sees invisible-to-everyone-else creatures she calls "horseless headmen" everywhere she goes, and is growing a weird rash in spots all over her body), but when a volcano emerges from a great lake in a night and sasquatchs are walking all over town, you know the shit's hit the fan.

Throwing every paranormal weird phenomena into one book shouldn't work. And I'm sure some people think it doesn't work here. But I loved that it was so out of the box. That if you could think of a paradigm of mythology and/or speculation, it was in here. The fact that the primary cast was made up of queers and people of color and it was set out of amerika was pure gravy, icing, kicked it up a notch, and made me drool.

This book is hot. I kinda don't want to let it out of my sight. And I will be handselling it like a mofo.