Daughters Unto Devils

by Amy Lukavics

Sometimes I believe the baby will never stop crying.

Sixteen-year-old Amanda Verner fears she is losing her mind. When her family move from their small mountain cabin to the vast prairie, Amanda hopes she can leave her haunting memories behind: of her sickly Ma giving birth to a terribly afflicted baby; of the cabin fever that claimed Amanda's sanity; of the boy who she has been meeting in secret. . .
But the Verners arrive on the prairie to find their new home soaked in blood. So much blood. And Amanda has heard stories - about men becoming unhinged and killing their families, about the land being tainted by wickedness.

With guilty secrets weighing down on her, Amanda can't be sure if the true evil lies in the land, or within her soul . . .

Perfect for fans of American Horror Story, Stephen King, Veronica Roth and The Others.

'Amy Lukavics brings serious game to the horror genre with DAUGHTERS UNTO DEVILS. Deeply disturbing, truly riveting and highly recommended' Jonathan Maberry, bestselling author of the Rot & Ruin series
'Absolutely fantastic...completely defies the status quo' teenreads.com
'This isn't a book you'll want to miss' Maximum Pop!

• ISBN10: 0606394486
• ISBN13: 9780606394482
• Publish Date: 27 September 2016 (first published 29 September 2015)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 18 March 2021
• Imprint: Turtleback
• Edition: Bound for Schools & Libraries ed.
• Format: Hardcover (Library Binding)
• Pages: 272
• Language: English

Reviews

[shannonmiz]

This review was originally posted on It Starts at Midnight
This book was absolutely strange and creepy. I was wholly sucked in, and wanted to know all the things. I guess the only problem I actually had with the book is that I did not end up knowing as many of the things as I wanted. But that is a problem in my world. I don't actually know where or when this happened. I guess somewhere in the middle of the country because there's a prairie mentioned? But also a mountain? And like... even though the characters were "old-timey" in the way they lived, was the whole world like that? You see, these things bugged me because I like answers.

On the other hand, this was delightfully weird and awful. So if you enjoy that, Daughters Unto Devils absolutely delivers. And maybe the vagueness was purposeful, but I do love answers. I would totally read a sequel, just saying.

[pamela]

Well there is one thing I can say about this book...it was short! Reading Amy Lukavics 'Daughters unto Devils' was one of the most disappointing reading experiences of my life. When a publisher walks up to you and says, 'You must read this! It's like Little House on the Prairie meets The Exorcist', expectations are naturally high. This book fell oh, so short.

The characters were completely flat and two dimensional, and Lukavics' world building leaves a lot to be desired. Her language choices felt forced (there are only so many instances of characters referring to each other as 'sister' or 'daughter' a reader should ever have to take), and instead of building a time and place through her prose, she instead chose to use a superficially tacky form of 'Ye Olde Englishe' to let us know it was set in the past.

There was absolutely no tension, and very little build up of suspense through the plot. I can actually count a total of three horror filled supernatural occurrences in which the protagonist was involved. Each of these, rather than being scary, were so over the top and sudden as to be almost laughable. The plot didn't hang together, and without any character development it just felt like one ridiculous occurrence after another.

'Last Winter' was mentioned constantly through the novel, with very little information given as to what actually happened. When we do find out, it turns out that Lukavics seems to know very little about the spread of infection or mental health in confined spaces. She's given her novel a religious overtone, and yet not chosen to go anywhere with it other than having her characters sing hymns and reference the devil.

This whole book needed a lot more development. There was the potential for a frightening and fascinating novel in there somewhere, but there was simply not enough character exploration and world building. Lukavics certainly had the space to do it; the novel was short and the text was extra large to give it the appearance of a normal sized novel.

The entire plot can be summed up in three bullet points:

1. Characters move house
2. Overnight and for no reason, the mother turns into a demon.
3. The Prairie did it...

THE END

[cornerfolds]

Read more of my reviews at Cornerfolds.com!

*Review to come!*