In the street, we all acted like nothing was wrong too. We sipped our drinks, spiked with whatever was convenient, and we chewed our burgers, tasteless and dry. We wanted to talk about them. We wanted to say the truth, to scream it, to confess our fears. But we couldn't. We'd practiced keeping quiet for so long that now, when we needed to speak the most, we'd forgotten how. And anyways, what was the proper way to bid farewell to everything you'd known? Even if we hadn't sewn our lips shut years ago, there still might not be words for what we needed to say.

This is one of those quiet dread-laden horror novels that are as much about the horror of real life (in this case, a dying industrial town and the people living dead-end lives there, embodied by six girls and their families) as whatever supernatural thing is happening simultaneously. Themes of transformation, stagnancy, destruction, and renewal ground the story, providing a framework for the changes happening to the town itself, to the girls' bodies, even down to little details like Phoebe's bug house and the butterflies therein. Body horror normally upsets me, but Kiste's handles it so delicately that it's not pure icky blood and guts; it is grotesque at times, but not gross-out. It has a purpose, from the mundane, like Dawn's pregnancy, to the horrific, like the girls' transformations to creatures of rust and metal. (I did have to skim a few fingernail triggers but that's common in body horror stories.)

I was impressed by the writing, the setting, the relationships, Phoebe's character growth -- everything. I will be looking for more of Kiste's work and I'm happy she won the Stoker Award for First Novel because I might have missed it otherwise.