Anyone who loves YA horror will recognise the incredible Kate Alice Marshall whose twisty and suspenseful past horror titles include Rules For Vanishing and These Fleeting Shadows as well as her recent adult fiction debut What Lies In The Woods from earlier this year. Returning to YA with her new horror novel The Narrow, the Queen of Scream has a deliciously creepy and unnerving tale of sapphic love and loss intertwined with dark, gritty themes of abuse and learned helplessness. And of course there are ghosts!
This author excels at creating an immersive and mesmerising mythology that feels like a half-remembered nightmare, something ghastly and familiar that our waking mind has attempted to exorcise. The Narrow introduces readers to a terrifying apparition known as The Drowning Girl, a ghost who appears to be in the process of drowning, choking and dripping water, leaving behind watery footprints as the only trace of her visit. However her sporadic appearances have recently increased in frequency and target Atwood’s Abigail House, an isolated residence where Delphine Fournier lives in seclusion with only one companion who must follow a stringent set of decontamination rules before interacting with her to prevent a relapse of her mysterious illness. When the previous companion exits the school after a so-called accident, Eden White takes her place—and unwittingly becomes the replacement fixation of The Drowning Girl.
What sets The Narrow apart from this author’s previous YA horror releases is the mystery behind the Drowning Girl’s death which leads Eden down a rabbit-hole as she tries to uncover the truth of what happened decades ago with minimal clues to work off. Instead of our protagonist’s main focus just being on the paranormal phenomena at play in their surroundings, Eden is also focused on delving into the past and identifying suspects that may have been linked to the death of the unfortunate soul who became the Drowning Girl. The suspense of this investigative storyline adds an additional layer of intrigue to engage the reader even as Eden’s compassion and desire to help lay to rest the ghost’s unresolved trauma results in her suffering ongoing injuries from contact with the Drowning Girl.
The restless dead aren’t the only ones with unresolved trauma—we meet Eden at the start of the story already injured and shying away from thinking about how she ended up bruised and battered. We see her intermittent flashbacks which slowly flesh out her summer holidays in more detail and the horrible circumstances that led to her injuries. Eden isolates herself from her friends out of fear of revealing her troubled background and the transition to Abigail House comes at the perfect time to avoid her loved ones and reduce the risk of them finding out something’s wrong with her. Throughout the story, her friends continue trying to reach out to her despite her best efforts to push them away and there is a wonderfully wholesome arc about simply accepting love from others rather than limiting the love you feel you deserve based on your own perceived self-worth. While some readers may be dissatisfied with the lack of a concrete resolution to the abuse storyline, it rings true to real life that many cases can’t be wrapped up neatly with a bow and the best-case scenario may just be for the victim to move on with a healthy support system around them.
Kate Alice Marshall has crafted a tautly plotted and emotionally sophisticated story which combines spooky fantastical elements with a more grounded examination of human relationships in all their flawed glory. The Narrow stars a compassionate-to-a-fault heroine who faces an uphill journey learning to prioritise her wellbeing, a desperate ghost with murky motivations that may cost too much to unravel and a tantalising mystery with twists and turns to keep you guessing.
The Narrow is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of August 1st 2023.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
A ghost haunting her boarding school uncovers a teen girl’s best kept secrets in the Queen of Scream’s deliciously terrifying new novel.
Everyone has heard the story of the Narrow. The river that runs behind the Atwood School is only a few feet across and seemingly placid, but beneath the surface, the waters are deep and vicious. It’s said that no one who has fallen in has ever survived.
Eden White knows that isn’t true. Six years ago, she saw Delphine Fournier fall into the Narrow—and live.
Delphine now lives in careful isolation, sealed off from the world. Even a single drop of unpurified water could be deadly to her, and no one but Eden has any idea why. Eden has never told anyone what she saw or spoken to Delphine since, but now, unable to cover her tuition, she has to make a deal: her expenses will be paid in return for serving as a live-in companion to Delphine.
Eden finds herself drawn to the strange and mysterious girl, and the two of them begin to unravel each other’s secrets. Then Eden discovers what happened to the last girl who lived with Delphine: she was found half-drowned on dry land. Suddenly Eden is waking up to wet footprints tracking to the end of her bed, the sound of rain on the windows when the skies are clear, and a ghostly silhouette in her doorway. Something is haunting Delphine—and now it’s coming for Eden, too.
