Nina The Wandering Reader's Reviews > Jawbone

Let me start by saying there's a good chance many will not feel this book is for them for the same reasons I assumed it wouldn't be for me. It's slow-simmering, psychological horror with a writing style that many might label as "pretentious". But that's okay. To each their own. If you are that person, skip this book.

But if you are a reader who loves their horror novels to unnerve them while simultaneously having the senses bombarded with symbolic imagery and writing that is both beautiful and vicious: this might be for you.

JAWBONE follows a clique of wealthy, bored, teenage girls who spend a lot of their free time after school hanging out in an abandoned building, telling each other scary stories and testing the group's durability with dangerous dares—jumping from high places, punching each other in the stomach, strangling one another until unconscious--ya know, normal teen girl stuff. The leader of this clique is Annelise and she is a fearsome creature to behold. A lover of cosmic horror and “creepypastas”, Annelise invents what she calls the White God—"white" representing an unsoiled canvas, the possibility of corruption, a fathomless fear— and she gets her friends to “play along” in her strange rituals of worship (again…just your everyday teen girl stuff). There is also another story happening with Annelise’s best friend Fernanda, who has been kidnapped and being held captive by their literature teacher, Miss Clara.

I loved this book, and was surprised when I realized this fact because horror with this sort of writing style--lyrical with very little dialogue--is rarely my cup of tea. I tend to space out or get lost. Shockingly that wasn’t the case with JAWBONE. I was unsettled the entire time, questioning the sanity and reliability of each character’s perspective, and found myself wondering if Annelise’s imagination could have power not only over her friends, but the readers as well. I was fully intrigued by this anti-heroine who is manipulative and intelligent and terrifying. Author Monica Ojeda weaves a very raw, dark tapestry of themes: female sexuality, girlhood, mother/daughter relationships, religion, purity, and adolescence. Seeing as this book was translated from Spanish to English, I truly hope Ojeda’s other works of horror make it to the States so I can read more. She has gained a new fan!