As summer comes to an end, Evie Von Rathe is determined to begin the search for her parents in earnest. Armed with her knowledge of the otherworldly, her mom’s violet glasses, and a pendant full of doors, Evie begins to piece together clues. When she realizes her mother’s bedtime story might be a roadmap to finding them, Evie follows it back to the Dark Sun Side.
But stories are funny things, and they change from one teller to the next.
The black nothing of the Radix is waiting, and it knows more than it’s ever let on. Evie will need every bit of courage she has for what’s coming. With Bird at her side, and maybe even a reluctant Lark as well, Evie has what she hopes is her last adventure under a purple sky.
Finishing a trilogy is always such a satisfying feeling, but reading Lora Senf’s THE LONELIEST PLACE comes with a pretty awesome caveat: while this concludes the proper BLIGHT HARBOR trilogy, I still have PENNIES (a BLIGHT HARBOR prequel) on my shelf!
AND! The author just announced the other day that she is working on DEAR DESDEMONA, another BLIGHT HARBOR prequel! So while I’m sad to say goodbye to the utterly brilliant Evie Von Rathe, I’m comforted knowing there’s still some more adventures to be had in Blight Harbor!!
This is probably going to be a very vague, spoiler-free, chaotic review. It’s been kind of a challenging month(ish) for me, with some weird life things eating into my reading time. I also listened to THE LONELIEST PLACE entirely on audiobook (which always makes reviews a bit tricky for me), a lot of it in the middle of the night as I dealt with a wicked stretch of insomnia.
The first two books in the trilogy I mixed in some of the audiobook with the physical, but I grew so attached to Kimberly Woods as the narrator of the series that I opted to go 100% audio for the finale! She completely embodies Evie in every way, and also the voice she uses for The Clackity is utterly amazing…there’s this sort of delicate balance between gleeful madness and malice she brings to this strange, haunted creature. Truly, Kimberly Woods is as good as it gets!
Summer is finally winding down and for the intrepid Evie Von Rathe, that means it’s time to to lock in, get back to the Dark Sun Side, and solve the mystery of what became of her parents, once and for all. It’s been such an emotional journey for Evie, but she’s got to make this one last push if she’ll ever hope to be reunited with her parents.
Armed with her mother’s storybook & special sunglasses, and with Bird, her fearless magical tattoo friend, Evie must play one last “game” with Clackity. But Clackity’s games are never exactly fair, and more often than not are rigged in its favor. Evie will need to use her wits & rely on her friends to save herself and find her parents.
What a joy it’s been reading about Evie Von Rathe’s big adventures! I truly think she’s one of the greatest protagonists in middle grade horror, and these books are so easy to recommend. Even though they fall under the horror umbrella, there’s more than a bit of fantasy & adventure mixed in, so I think the series would appeal to so many different types of readers.
And Evie’s story is just written with so much heart, too. This is a character I’ve grown so fond of over the course of these three books. It’s a little hard imagining never bumping into her again, so I’ll cross my fingers she turns up in some capacity in another Blight Harbor story!
These books have meant a lot to me, and I’ll always associate THE CLACKITY with the period of time when I was really discovering middle grade horror for the first time! I think Lora Senf is one of the very best MG horror authors & I’m so thrilled to have more of her work to read soon! Hoping to dive into PENNIES sooner rather than later, and she has her first YA book, UNNAMED BONES coming out this month!
There’s a short list I keep in mind of middle grade horror novels I’d always recommend should anyone ever ask, and the whole BLIGHT HARBOR trilogy is definitely on that list! THE LONELIEST PLACE was a wonderful, spooky, and emotionally satisfying end to a really remarkable trilogy!
Grimdark Dad 