HARROW LAKE

RELEASED 9 JULY 320 pages | Paperback/ebook/ audiobook Author Kat Ellis Publisher Penguin Books

A small town, an urban legend and a great big burst of nostalgia in the form of a 20-year-old cult film all feature in Kat Ellis’s latest YA novel. Lola is a troubled teen who returns to her missing mother’s hometown after her maverick movie director father is stabbed. Conflicts with her severe grandmother, a burgeoning love interest and the unravelling of family secrets move the plot along apace. This all unfolds against the backdrop of the anniversary of her father’s most celebrated movie The Night Jar, which was shot in the town.

Harrow Lake taps neatly into nostalgic hooks, and one of its key strengths is in creating a very believable history around The Night Jar – by the end of the novel it’s almost possible to convince yourself you’ve actually seen the film, so detailed and cinematic are the descriptions of it coming into being.

Sadly the novel is less successful when it comes to establishing its boogeyman, Mister Jitters – a generically monstrous figure which never convinces. Never really frightening, then, instead this works best as a psychological thriller and a mystery with a very likeable lead, one which might appeal to young fans of Grady Hendrix’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism or Clay McLeod’s The Remaking

– though it never quite hits the highs of either.