Almost Demon by AJ Salem book review (spoiler free)

The last thing Gemma Pope expects to study in the after-school book club is demon etiquette but that is exactly what she has to do to succeed as a summoner and save her hometown. Since taking the blame for the car accident that claimed the lives of her twin brother and two of her best friends, she s been seeing things. Dark shadows, opaque, menacing, multiplying. The clock starts ticking when the local mild-mannered librarian suffers a psychotic break and pulls a gun on her reading circle. People are dying in disasters and wars all over the world. Gemma s dad is getting weird, her classmates are becoming violent, and the darkness surrounding Harrisport is getting thicker. Does she trust hot English Lit teacher Mr. Flynn or Ian, the mysterious new kid in town, who has knowledge beyond his years and access to other dimensions? It is only when the gates to hell are opened, that Gemma learns who her real friends are. Discover what lies just beyond the veil of humanity in the sleepy town of Harrisport.

Rate:

3 of 5 stars

★★★

Book reviewer: Grace

Author interview & giveaway: Anna Scanlon - author of Unravelled

"No one heard us. They decided not to, to turn their heads away. It was too much to bear. Too much to know. Too hard to swallow. But now that the world knows, now that the world has heard, it all seems so simple, so easy to defray. I screamed and no one heard. Next time, will you be listening?" Aliz and her twin sister, Hajna, are enjoying their playful, carefree and comfortable life with their parents in Szeged, Hungary just before the Nazis invade. Seemingly overnight, their lives change drastically as they are transported to the ghetto on the outskirts of the city and then to Auschwitz to be used in Mengele's deadly experiments. After several months of brutal torture, Aliz is liberated to find that she is the only survivor in her family. At not even 11 years old, Aliz must make the journey to San Francisco alone, an entire world away from everything she's known, in order to live with her only known relatives whom she has never met-- a depressed aunt and teenage cousin who is more than ready to escape her mother's melancholy. Told through the eyes of both Aliz and her cousin Isabelle, Unravelled tells a story of survival, hope, family and the lives war and genocide haunt long after liberation.

Anna Scanlon is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area but currently resides in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom (she has previously lived in New York City, Budapest, Grenoble and Amsterdam). She holds an MA in History from the University of Amsterdam and is pursuing a PhD in History from the University of Leicester. She lecturers and teaches on the Holocaust and art and consults with schools and theater companies who are working on Holocaust related material. She has been writing since she was a little girl, keeping diaries whilst pretending she was Laura Ingalls Wilder and writing historical fiction novels about WWII and the Oregon Trail (obviously based on the video game series!). In the third grade, she wrote an "adaptation" of her favorite film "My Girl" for her class. Unravelled is her first published novel. www.anna-scanlon.com