The Replacement

August 16, 2010
Many high school students feel like outsiders, but in this dark fantasy Mackie Doyle has better reason than most to be alienated. Mackie is a changeling, a fairy child exchanged for a stolen human baby. Everyone knows it, though no one will acknowledge it, for fear of upsetting a deal the town made long ago. What, after all, is one baby taken every seven years, in exchange for continued economic prosperity? "Everyone else's unemployment skyrockets, and their tech plants go bankrupt and their dairy farms fail, but not ours," says Mackie's sister, Emma, one of the few who will acknowledge the town's secrets. Mackie, however—sickened by iron, terrified that his neighbors will turn on him—has paid a terrible price, as has Tate Stewart, who is traumatized by the loss of her baby sister, the latest stolen child. Eventually, the two teenagers join forces in an attempt to overturn the town's intolerable status quo. Debut novelist Yovanoff offers well-developed characters, a fascinating take on the Fairy Court, and an exciting story line. Combined with wicked cover art, this book has the makings of a success. Ages 12–up.

August 1, 2010
Mackie's nauseated by the scent of blood, is burned by cold iron and would die if he entered a church. None of this helps him avoid notice in his hometown, where close-mouthed neighbors hang horseshoes and leave milk in the garden. No quaint old-world superstitions, these; in the town of Gentry, a child dies mysteriously every seven years. Mackie's been raised to avoid notice, so nobody will recognize him for the changeling his parents and adoring sister know him to be. But with another baby apparently dead and blood and iron all over town, Mackie's having a hard enough time staying upright, let alone under the radar. Soon the sickly boy meets the Morrigan and her court: a mishmash of Celtic mythology with British folklore, elfpunk music and adorable Tim Burton–esque horrors. There's romance and rescue (though mercifully no Edward Cullen types to replace the tale's endearing original couple). Some of the urban-fantasy elements get dropped in the crowd partway through, but enough grotesque goodies remain to keep this a fast-paced, dark delicacy. (Urban fantasy. 12-14)

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 1, 2010

Gr 9 Up-In this grim debut novel, the Doyles hide the terrible secret that 16-year-old Mackie is a changeling who was swapped for their real son when he was a baby. In their town of Gentry, there is an unspoken acknowledgment that a child is stolen every seven years in an uneasy bargain for the town's prosperity. Mackie's struggles to go unnoticed are made more difficult by his severe allergies to iron and other metal, his inability to set foot on consecrated ground such as his minister father's church, and his tendency to become severely ill around blood. Now he is dying. When a classmate's baby sister is abducted and a Replacement left in her place, Mackie is reluctantly drawn into the age-old rift between the Morrigan and the Lady, sisters who lead the two changeling clans who live underneath Gentry. Mackie agrees to help the Morrigan maintain the unwitting townspeople's goodwill in exchange for a drug he needs to survive. Meanwhile, he and his friends plot to rescue Tate's stolen sister from the Lady. Yovanoff's innovative plot draws on the changeling legends from Western European folklore. She does an excellent job of creating and sustaining a mood of fear, hopelessness, and misery throughout the novel, something that is lightened only occasionally by Mackie's dry humor and the easy charm of his friend Roswell. The novel ends with a glimmer of hope, though the grisly and disturbing images throughout may overshadow the more positive ending. Still, teens who enjoy horror and dark fantasy novels will no doubt flock to the shelves for Mackie's story.-Leah J. Sparks, formerly at Bowie Public Library, MD

Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2010
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* The light paranormalsthink vampires, werewolves, angels, faeries, demonsthat flood young adult lit often share a similar problem: by merely tweaking established archetypes, they feel largely interchangeable. No such pitfalls bedevil Yovanoff, whose first novel is not only startlingly conceived from the ground up but will still appeal to the legions craving doom, gloom, and, yes, romance. Mackie lives in Gentry, a small town that owes its history of good fortune to an uneasy relationship with the supernatural underground dwellers who protect them. Their price? Merely an annual human sacrifice, which they take in the form of a stolen baby, leaving behind a fragile nonhuman replacement. Mackie is such a replacement, and despite his allergies to iron and blood, he has somehow survived to be a teenbut now is about to meet his makers. The two separate menageries of monstershoused in a slag heap and a dump hillare almost Victorian in bearing, and possess an apocalyptic Bradburian worldview: We are pandemonium and disaster. We are the dancing, gibbering horror of the world, says the baddest of them all, the Dirt Witch. The climax is not perhaps what it might be, but Yovanoffs unsettling villains and intriguing moral ambivalence make this effort shockingly original and frequently breathtaking.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2011
As if typical teenage angst weren't enough, Mackie Doyle explores his changeling heritage and also discovers the dark secret that explains his town's prosperity. This urban fantasy is too long and the tropes are overly familiar, but the intriguing premise--not to mention the striking cover art--should entice readers nevertheless.

(Copyright 2011 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)