No Filter

December 15, 2023
Amateur photographer Janessa "Jinx" McCormick makes an eerie discovery through her camera lens. It's summer in Greenbelt, Maryland, located just outside Washington, D.C., and 12-year-old Jinx is busy taking photographs for local businesses, various cosplayers, and a friend who wants to break into acting. What starts off as an inexplicable smudge on all the photos she's taken eventually turns into something much more sinister. Along with the light horror elements, a parallel thread explores Jinx's mental health while she struggles with OCD in the wake of her father's death. This struggle is the most powerful part of the novel, more suspenseful and compelling than the spooky elements. Readers will be more curious about what happened to both Jinx's father and mother and what she's keeping bottled up in therapy than what's causing the smudges on her photographs. Jinx is a richly drawn, well-imagined character, mature in many ways and yet somehow still very young. The racially diverse supporting characters who surround Jinx, who reads white, are also well developed; each forms an important piece of the storyline. Though the two plotlines seem to be more parallel than braided together, the insights the book offers into Jinx's inner thoughts and feelings make this a valuable, interesting read. An absorbing, well-characterized story for readers seeking something mildly scary. (Horror. 9-12)

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February 9, 2024

Gr 5 Up-Twelve-year-old Janessa "Jinx" McCormick is something of a local celebrity in her hometown of Greenbelt, MD, not only for her photography talents that help her to feel in control of her life, but also because she is the daughter of a rock star. After her father's unexpected death, Jinx continues to lean into her art, getting paid in food and other services by the people of the town who know that her aunt is struggling to adapt to caring for a child. As Jinx navigates complicated emotions around her father's death, she begins to notice a flaw in her photography. A black mark begins to appear in nearly every photo, and, despite her efforts to fix the camera, the mark keeps getting bigger-and it looks human. Skovron expertly navigates child-adult conversations, conveying how even an emotionally mature child will understand life lessons differently than the adults around them. The book builds suspense for the big reveal of the mark's true nature, but ultimately falls flat with an ending that feels rushed and wrapped up too neatly considering the severity of the protagonist's mental health episode in the conclusion. Characters are diverse; topics of suicide, OCD, and grief are handled with care. Resources for child abuse and suicide hotlines are provided at the end. VERDICT Consider this as an additional purchase where suspenseful books are popular, and hand to students who may benefit from protagonists handling difficult life situations.-Ashley Grillo

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