Staff Pick
This unusual and hauntingly powerful love story is set in a slaughterhouse factory housing a ghost who grants wishes. The factory hires a cheap labor force and it turns into an exploding workplace. This moving novel weaves violence, tenderness, and forgiveness into one alluring story. Recommended By Richard C., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
This love story for the ages, set in a reimagined industrial Asia, is a little dark, a bit breathless, and completely compelling.
Sixteen-year-old Wen assists her father in his medical clinic, housed in a slaughterhouse staffed by the Noor, men hired as cheap factory labor. Wen often hears the whisper of a ghost in the slaughterhouse, a ghost who grants wishes to those who need them most. And after one of the Noor humiliates Wen, the ghost grants an impulsive wish of hers — brutally.
Guilt-ridden, Wen befriends the Noor, including the outspoken leader, a young man named Melik. At the same time, she is lured by the mystery of the ghost. As deadly accidents fuel tensions within the factory, Wen is torn between her growing feelings for Melik, who is enraged at the sadistic factory bosses and the prejudice faced by his people at the hand of Wen's, and her need to appease the ghost, who is determined to protect her against any threat — real or imagined. Will she determine whom to trust before the factory explodes, taking her down with it?
Review
"Sarah Fine's slaughterhouse-set Phantom of the Opera retelling is vivid, grisly, and beautiful. It's impossible not to root for the tenderhearted Wen and the noble Melik as they move through this world of endless meat and misery. Fine's writing is smart and fittingly brutal, and this bittersweet tale is as haunting as any melancholy aria sung on the stage." April Tucholke, author of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
About the Author
Sarah Fine is the author of The Guards of the Shadowlands series. She was born on the West Coast, raised in the Midwest, and is now firmly entrenched on the East Coast, where she lives with her husband and two children. When she's not writing, she's working as a child psychologist. Visit her at SarahFineBooks.com.