'Tess Matheson only wants three things: time to practice her cello, for her sister to be happy, and for everyone else to leave her alone.
'Instead, Tess finds herself working all summer at her boarding school library, shelving books and dealing with the intolerable patrons. The worst of them is Eliot Birch: snide, privileged, and constantly requesting forbidden grimoires. After a bargain with Eliot leads to the discovery of an ancient book in the library's grimoire collection, the pair accidentally unleash a book-bound demon.
'The demon will stop at nothing to stay free, manipulating ink to threaten those Tess loves and dismantling Eliot’s strange magic. Tess is plagued by terrible dreams of the devil and haunting memories of a boy who wears Eliot's face. All she knows is to stay free, the demon needs her... and he'll have her, dead or alive.'
There's just something about big old libraries that lend themselves well to creepy stories. They're one of the best places in the world, filled with wonderful, wonderful books, but when a writer sets a story in a library and things get spooky it just feels right. Perhaps its the rows and rows of shelves, the quiet that hangs over them, or the stern librarians watching you from a distance in case you hurt one of their books. Whatever it is about libraries that makes them perfect for horror Tori Bovalino manages to capture it.
The Devil Makes Three centres on Tess Matheson, a budding young musician who's had to give up on her dream of attending music school in order to get her younger sister into an elite school. Thanks to her father having lost all of their money she's had to turn to her aunt to get them a place at the school she works at; but Tess had to go along as part of the deal, using her talent to secure the place. Angry that she's had to give up her dream to help her sister, she's spending the summer working in the library with her aunt.
It's at this library that we meet our second lead, Eliot Birch, the son of a faculty member that Tess absolutely loathes. When Tess gets assigned to pull out dozens and dozens of magical grimoires and texts for Eliot the two of them end up striking up a conversation, one in which Eliot learns that Tess hates his father as much as he does. Using this to his advantage Eliot asks Tess to let him into the library's locked basement, where the most dangerous texts are held. Together, the two of them travel beneath the library to gather the books Eliot is after, but discover a strange chamber hidden in one of the walls; one that holds a mysterious book.
When Tess reads from the book she begins to have strange dreams, dreams of an entity wearing Eliots face, trying to convince her to give herself over to him. When books around her begin to bleed ink, and she starts to wake up hurt she begins to suspect that she and Eliot released something evil from that book, something that has set it's sights on claiming Tess as it's own.
I have to be honest, I went into this book expecting certain things. Thanks to the description of the book, and the ages of the main characters, I thought that this was going to be a dark fantasy style book aimed at a young adult audience, with some slow burn romance; and there is a lot of that in this book, but what its got more of is horror. And I absolutely loved that.
The book has some great characterisation, and we really get to know Tess and Eliot well, delving into their histories, their thought processes, and their motivations. It sets up its world well, and in a very short amount of time you feel like you know the world they're inhabiting, especially the library. And the romance that builds between the two of them feels well earned, and fits wonderfully into the enemies to lovers genre. But, the area where the book really, really shines is the elements of horror.
At first this starts small, with creepy dreams, and strange visions, but over the course of the book things ramp up in intensity, with undead creatures stalking our heroes through the streets, trying to break into their homes. It's intense and disturbing at times, and really pushes the boundaries at points. It's something that I honestly wasn't expecting; though considering the title of the book I really should have been. It felt like it was taking a lot of things that have become very familiar in this genre, and pushing them further than normal. It felt both incredibly familiar and comfortable, but also different and at times extreme.
Tori Bovalino does an amazing job in this book, creating a story and characters that I very quickly came to love; and crafted a book that I was honestly sorry to see end. Come the final pages I found myself feeling disappointed that it was only as long as it was. I could have spent longer with these people, and if a sequel was to announced I'd be pre-ordering it straight away.
If you're a fan of YA books, if you like dark fantasy, horror, romance, and just honestly great storytelling this is a book that you're going to want to check out. Just make sure that if you're borrowing it from the library you don't read anything there you shouldn't be.
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