#AudiobookReview-‘Sawkill Girls’ by Claire Legrand

Allegedly I am notoriously difficult to buy for at Christmas/birthdays etc according to my Other Half, Mr B.W (Book Widower). AS IF. Take me to a bookshop, let me roam, I love books and candles what is so difficult about that I ask you! The cheek of him! Anyway…to help him out last year , and considering our house is approximately 50% books at the moment, I suggested an Audible UK membership. It is £7.99 a month, first month free, you can return books for whatever reason you like and if you have Kindle Unlimited, those titles with audio description can also be downloaded to your devices.

As someone with both dyslexia and dyspraxia, I can often struggle with ebooks and print so listening is the perfect way to experience a book-and I will fight people who tell me that listening to a book is not reading. It 100% is! They are unabridged books!

With hours and hours spent on railway stations and walking to and from clinical placements, there up to 6 hours in a day when I could be reading instead of swearing under my breath at incompetent train/bus companies. It’s ideal! Not all narrators are suited to their material though, for example Mr B.W loves the Game of Thrones series but I couldn’t get behind the tone he used at all.

Which brings me to the Two Book Thieves recommended Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand.

Beware of the woods and the dark, dank deep.

He’ll follow you home, and he won’t let you sleep

*I am going to try and keep it spoiler free so will indicate when to stop reading in case content could be described as such*

The narrator, Lauren Ezzo, is tonally perfect for this Y.A read . She takes the main 4 female characters and gives them voices, nuances and differentiates between them beautifully.

‘Sawkill Girls’ is about an island to which sisters Marion and Charlotte relocate following the death of their father.

From the moment that they set foot on the island, elemental forces stir and take notice ….and so do local girls Zoey –the daughter of the chief of police-and Val Mortimer-heir apparent to the reigning family on Sawkill.

“There was a magnetism to the Mortimer women, and they knew it, and they used it. It was their right, this witchery; they’d given up their souls for it.”

Zoey’s girlfriend is the latest in the missing ‘Sawkill Girls’ , a shockingly large number of teens who have disappeared, all of them girls, none of them have ever been found. Zoey has her suspicions about Val and her family, as someone says in the book ‘People with that much money rarely come by it honestly’.

Her position as daughter of the Chief of Police allows her access to records that other people may not, and her suspicions mount regarding a local legend known as ‘The Collector’ who is thought to swallow girls whole.

Marion is struggling to cope with moving away from all that she has known, feeling constantly responsible for her sister and mother’s wellbeing. All she wants is to love and be loved in return and this is an aching need inside her that is all consuming.

Val is a haughty queen bee who is beginning to realise her family’s connection to the local legends and struggles to cope with this.

Then Charlotte goes missing…

Together, these battered, embattled and scarred girls come together to fight for the Sawkill Girls, and to bring justice to those who have been taken.

In depth and discussion of Trigger Warnings follows

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Still here? Ok let’s go!

This is definitely not aimed at younger teens, I would suggest it is suitable for older ones due to the discussion of death, murder, sex scenes, swearing, violence and abuse.

The girls are allegorical in that they represent the way that a patriarchal society values and treats females. There are approximately 20 girls who have vanished on an island of all places and no one has seen anything.

The Collector eats girls and becomes stronger as he does so, that is exactly what is done to girls as they begin to explore their sexual identities. They are suffocated by what is expected of them versus what they want for themselves. The incredibly vivid dreams that Marion has about being kissed and the ensuing feelings they engender constantly remind her how unloved she feels .

It’s a gory, graphic, bone deep very physical horror described in this book, there are lots of scenes that focus on bodies and their component parts. The narrator invokes a hypnotic sense of touch through her voice and you feel like you are there, on Sawkill.

The descriptors are so vivid they are drenched in gore and blood. It’s a very sensual , honest read where the characters are central to the story but play a larger part in the overall, feminist scheme of the book

“Girls hunger. And we’re taught, from the moment our brains can take it, that there isn’t enough food for us all.”

It reminded me most of early Clive Barker, where the stories cut straight to the bone and suck out the marrow, the horror exist to expose the blood and guts of existence as a girl and how, together, they can create something strong enough to defeat a monster.

‘Sawkill Girls’ is beautiful ,lyrical, bloody and heartfelt.

I listened to it, rapt, entranced, willing Zoey, Marion and Val on.

It was absolutely brilliant and pulls no punches. The representation  of teenage sexuality was particularly well done I thought and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it as well as looking forward to what Claire Legrand does next-in the meantime I intend to plunder her back catalogue!

https://www.claire-legrand.com/