This is a Dr. Jeckyl / Mr. Hyde retelling that features horror in the real-world in a way that touched a nerve. The characters are all middle grade age, and act and behave like middle graders, not like full-blown teens or young adult characters, but the horror aspect – having irreversible surgery done by an untrained doctor – was viscerally real, and therefore I’m going to classify this one as YA.
Sol, or Solitude, doesn’t remember his name in the hospital, the IRL hospital, where he was being treated for debilitating pain.
He does remember being taken from the hospital room and driven in a van to the Ash House, where supposedly a doctor will be able to cure him.
Except…the “patients” -- all kids living at the Ash House for the last decade or so -- don’t sleep in the Ash House, they sleep in a dilapidated greenhouse all by themselves, no adult supervision at all. They live by a set of rules, called “Nicenesses,” that I got the feeling were designed to keep the environment from turning full-on Lord of the Flies, but some of the kids, like Con, turn on other kids who don’t live by the Nicenesses.
Sol just can’t. He can see the wrongness of the entire set-up in a way the other kids can’t, because he’s a new addition. The first in a long time. Other kids like his main ally, Dom, grew up in the Ash House with a Headmaster who was kind, concerned, dedicated and beloved, and who the kids still hope will call with instructions for how to continue living in the Ash House. They even take turns waiting by the phone for him to call.
Instead, the person who shows up one day is The Doctor.
Now in the original, Dr. Jeckyl is not the murderer, Mr. Hyde is.
This is more of a, “What if the doctor were the more evil one of the spilt personalities?” exploration tale. And he’s got Sol in his sights. The Doctor’s been watching Sol via the drone “birds” that surveil the house.
Despite veiled references, Sol has no warning he’s about to go under anesthesia with a monster, only the other kids’ vague references to a girl named Mercy, who Sol’s not sure if she’s dead, escaped the Ash House, or living on the border in the real world.
And the Ash House has its own alluring kind of magic which does hold the promise of curing his pain.
The story is told in dual POVs of mostly Sol and Dom. It’s definitely a scary, downright nightmarish, read for the month! Enjoy.
