July 17, 2017
Each member of 17-year-old Esther Solar’s family is consumed by a different fear. Terrified to leave the house, her father has holed himself up in the basement for six years. Her mother, a believer in ghosts and bad luck, has become addicted to gambling. And due to Esther’s twin brother’s intense fear of the dark, their house is lit 24/7. Esther believes that her family’s propensity for these phobias stems from a curse bestowed on her grandfather years ago, and she dreads discovering a latent terror that will overtake her. Then Jonah, an elementary school acquaintance turned pickpocket, offers to help Esther confront and conquer 50 fears on a list she has assembled. In a darkly ironic tale about an offbeat dysfunctional family, Sutherland (Our Chemical Hearts) gives mixed messages about fate, death, and mental disorders; the supernatural elements of the novel feel incongruous beside Esther’s growing understanding of psychological illnesses and her tendency to hide her true self from the world. Though some characters undergo various forms of salvation, the book’s resolution is unsettling. Ages 14–up. Agent: Catherine Drayton, Inkwell Management.
July 5, 2017
This is a touching, hilarious and relatable book for older teens about depression, anxiety, facing your fears and learning to accept help when you need it most. Seventeen-year-old Esther’s life is dominated by her semi-definitive list of 50 worst nightmares and the curse on her family to be killed by their greatest fear. Accompanied by her twin brother, who is deathly afraid of the dark; her best friend, who is a mute not-quite ghost; and the boy who broke her heart when she was eight, Esther attempts to undo the curse by facing each fear on the list. Krystal Sutherland deftly balances nuanced conversations about dark topics such as suicide, mental health, domestic violence and addiction, with happier topics such as first love, family bonds, YouTube fame and pop-culture references. Though there are ghosts, curses and Death as a character, this book is a contemporary novel. The fantasy elements are all either a product of the protagonist’s overactive imagination or left open for readers to decide. A Semi-definitive List of Worst Nightmares is suitable for readers comfortable with violence; it includes self-harm, a suicide attempt by a main character and physical abuse of a child by a parent.
Tamsien West is a blogger at Babbling Books and the development executive at Melbourne Writers Festival