Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea - Softcover

Buch 1 von 2: The Between Series

Tucholke, April Genevieve

 
9780142423219: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0142423211 ISBN 13: 9780142423219
Verlag: Speak, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

A gothic thriller romance, set against a creepy summer backdrop.

Nothing much exciting rolls through Violet White's sleepy, seaside town . . . until River comes along. River rents the guesthouse behind Violet's crumbling estate, and as eerie, grim things start to happen, Violet begins to wonder about the boy living in her backyard. Is River just a crooked-smiling liar with pretty eyes and a mysterious past? Or could he be something more? Violet's grandmother always warned her about the Devil, but she never said he could be a dark-haired boy who takes naps in the sun, who likes coffee, who kisses you in a cemetery . . . who makes you want to kiss back. Violet's already so knee-deep in love, she can't see straight. And that's just how River likes it.

With shades of Stephen King and F. Scott Fitzgerald, this is a must-read for fans of Beautiful Creatures, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, and Anna Dressed in Blood.


“Looking for dark and eerie read...? Look no further than April Genevieve Tucholke’s YA debut, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.”
—EntertainmentWeekly.com

“Deliciously creepy.”
—TheAtlanticWire.com

*“A stunning debut with complex characters, an atmospheric setting, and a distinct voice… Tucholke has real talent.”
—VOYA, starred review

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

April Genevieve Tucholke digs classic movies, redheaded villains, big kitchens, and discussing murder at the dinner table. She and her husband—a librarian, former rare-book dealer, and journalist—live in Oregon. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is her first novel. She is also author of Between the Spark and Burn.

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Chapter 1

“You stop fearing the Devil when you’re holding his hand.”

Freddie said this to me, when I was little.

Everyone called my grandmother by her nickname, even my parents, because, as she put it, Freddie, short for Fredrikke was her name. Not Mother, or Grandmother. Just Freddie.

Then she asked me if I loved my brother.

“Luke is a damn bully,” I said.

I remember I was staring at the pink marble of the grand old staircase as we walked up together. There were black veins running through it, and they looked like the blue varicose veins on Freddie’s white legs. I remember thinking that the staircase must be getting old, like her.

“Don’t say damn, Violet.”

“You say damn.” And she did, too. All the time. “Luke pushed me down this damn staircase once,” I said, still looking at the marble steps. The fall didn’t kill me, if that’s what he’d wanted, but I knocked out two teeth and got a gash in my forehead that bled like hell. “I don’t love my brother,” I said. “And I don’t care what the Devil thinks about it. It’s the truth.”

Freddie gave me a sharp look then, her Dutch eyes a bright, bright blue despite her age. She had given me those blue eyes, and her blond hair as well.

Freddie put her wrinkled hands on mine. “There’s truths and then there’s truths, Violet. And some damn truths shouldn’t be spoken out loud, or the Devil will hear, and then he’ll come for you. Amen.”

When Freddie was young, she used to wear fur and attend parties and drink cocktails and sponsor artists. She’d told me wild stories, full of booze and broads and boys and trouble.

But something happened. Something Freddie never talked about. Something bad. Lots of people have bad sto­ries, and if they wail and sob and tell their story to anyone who’ll listen, it’s crap. Or half crap, at least. The stuff that really hurts people, the stuff that almost breaks them . . . that they won’t talk about. Ever.

I caught Freddie writing sometimes, late at night, fast and hard—so hard, I heard the paper tearing underneath her pen . . . but whether it was a diary or letters to friends, I didn’t know.

Maybe it was her daughter drowning so young that made my grandmother turn righteous and religious. Maybe it was something else. Whatever had happened, Freddie went looking to fill the hole that was left. And what she found was God. God, and the Devil. Because one didn’t exist without the other.

Freddie talked about the Devil all the time, almost as if he was her best friend, or an old lover. But for all her Devil talk, I never saw Freddie pray.

I prayed, though.

To Freddie. After she died. I’d done it so often over the past five years that it had become unconscious, like blow­ing on soup when it’s too hot. I prayed to Freddie about my parents being gone. And about the money running out. And being so lonely sometimes that the damn sea wind howling through my window felt closer to me than the brother I had upstairs.

And I prayed to Freddie about the Devil. I asked her to keep my hand out of his. I asked her to keep me safe from evil.

But, for all my praying, the Devil still found me.



Chapter 2

I lived with my twin brother, Luke. And that’s it. We were only seventeen, and it was illegal to be living alone, but no one did anything about it.

Our parents were artists. John and Joelie Iris White. Painters. They loved us, but they loved art more. They’d gone to Europe last fall, looking for muses in cafés and castles . . . and blowing through the last bit of the family wealth. I hoped they would come home soon, if for no other reason than I wanted there to be enough money left for me to go to a good university. Someplace pretty, with green lawns, and white columns, and cavernous libraries, and professors with elbow patches.

But I wasn’t counting on it.

My great-grandparents had been East Coast industri­alists, and they made loads of cash when they were really damn young. They invested in railroads and manufactur­ing—things that everyone was excited about back then. And they handed down all the money to a grandpa I never got to meet.

Freddie and my grandfather had been about the richest people in Echo in their day, as much as being the “est” of anything in Echo mattered. Freddie told me the Glen­ships had been wealthier, but rich was rich, in my mind. Grandpa built a big house right on the edge of a cliff above the crashing waves. He married my wild grandmother, and brought her to live with him and have his babies on the edge of the Atlantic.

Our home was dignified and elegant and great and beautiful.

And also wind-bitten and salt-stained and overgrown and neglected­­­—like an aging ballerina who looked young and supple from far away, but up close had gray at her temples and lines by her eyes and a scar on one cheek.

Freddie called our house Citizen Kane, after the old film with its perfectly framed shots and Orson Welles strutting around and talking in a deep voice. But I thought it was a depressing movie, mostly. Hopeless. Besides, the house was built in 1929, and Citizen Kane didn’t come out until 1941, which meant that Freddie took years to think of a name. Maybe she saw the movie and it meant something to her. I don’t know. No one really knew why Freddie did anything, most of the time. Not even me.

Freddie and my grandfather lived in the Citizen until they died. And after our parents went to Europe, I moved into Freddie’s old bedroom on the second floor. I left everything the way it was. I didn’t even take her dresses out of the walk-in closet.

I loved my bedroom . . . the vanity with the warped mirror, the squat chairs without armrests, the elaborate, oriental dressing screen. I loved curving my body into the velvet sofa, books piled at my feet, the dusty, floor-length curtains pushed back from the windows so I could see the sky. At night the purple-fringed lampshades turned the light a hue somewhere between lilac and dusky plum.

Luke’s bedroom was on the third floor. And I think we both liked having the space between us.

That summer, Luke and I finally ran out of the money our parents had given us when they’d left for Europe all those months ago. Citizen Kane needed a new roof because the ocean wind beat the hell out it, and Luke and I needed food. So I had the brilliant idea to rent out the guesthouse. Yes, the Citizen had a guesthouse, left over from the days when Freddie sponsored starving art­ists. They would move in for a few months, paint her, and then move on to the next town, the next wealthy person, the next gin bottle.

I put up posters in Echo, advertising a guesthouse for rent, and thought nothing would come of it.

But something did.

It was an early June day with a balmy breeze that felt like summer slapping spring. The salt from the sea was thick in the air. I sat on the fat front steps, facing the road that ran along the great big blue. Two stone columns framed the large front door, and the steps spilled down between them. From where I sat, our tangled, forgotten lawn sprawled out to the unpaved road. Beyond it was a sheer drop, ending in pounding waves.

So I was sitting there, taking turns reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories and watching the sky blurring into the far-off waves, when a new-old car turned up my road, went past Sunshine’s house, and pulled into my cir­cular driveway. I say old, because it was from...

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Verlag
Speak
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0142423211
ISBN 13 
9780142423219
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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