The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I would be lying if I said this was really a YA novel, but for all normal purposes, it is written from the point of view of a kid in Elementary school and has all the generalized coming of age elements.

However, this is very much for the adults. Nostalgia, sure, harkening back to a small town NY in the early sixties, drawing from all grand features of what I'll call the genre of Epic Grownup Nostalgia with Horror. You've probably seen it around. In A Boy's Life, or SK's IT. Or Stranger Things.

There are a lot of imitators, but the writing in these have to be MAGICAL if it's going to catch my love. This one has a lot of that magic.

Oh, a lot of the mystery revolves around a prowler in the neighborhood and missing children and the strange movements in a town mockup downstairs and his kid sister's strange abilities, but that's all window dressing to some really fantastic outright writing.

I definitely recommend this for you nostalgia fans or younger folk who are curious about what life might have been like, once upon a time, when it was NORMAL to go out with your friends all day long in the neighborhood without supervision.

I know, right? That's some SICK FANTASY, right there!

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