Ohana Reads: Blog Tour: The Cold is in Her Bones by Peternelle van Arsdale

Hello and welcome to The Cold is in Her Bones by Peternelle van Arsdale blog tour, hosted by JeanBookNerd! I'm so excited to be able to show you all my review and an excerpt from the book! If you're a fan of Medusa then you're certainly in for a treat.

And don't forget to check out the rest of the tour stops, which I've linked at the bottom of the post.

The Cold is in Her Bones by Peternelle van Arsdale

Release Date: January 22nd, 2019

Read: January 18th-

Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

Series: Standalone

Format: ARC, 288 pages

Source: McNally Robinson

Description from GoodReads:

Milla knows two things to be true: Demons are real, and fear will keep her safe.

Milla’s whole world is her family’s farm. She is never allowed to travel to the village and her only friend is her beloved older brother, Niklas. When a bright-eyed girl named Iris comes to stay, Milla hopes her loneliness might finally be coming to an end. But Iris has a secret she’s forbidden to share: The village is cursed by a demon who possesses girls at random, and the townspeople live in terror of who it will come for next.

Now, it seems, the demon has come for Iris. When Iris is captured and imprisoned with other possessed girls, Milla leaves home to rescue her and break the curse forever. Her only company on the journey is a terrible new secret of her own: Milla is changing, too, and may soon be a demon herself.

Review:

And this anger became bitterness, and this bitterness turned her into a monster.
I read The Beast is an Animal when it first released back in 2017, and was delighted at its level of creepy. I had originally gone into the novel thinking it’d be more paranormal than a horror story, and was surprised to find I enjoyed it nevertheless. Since then, I’ve opened myself up to the potential of reading more horror stories. When The Cold is in Her Bones was announced, I couldn't have been more excited to read it. The excitement only grew when the cover was revealed.

The Cold is in Her Bones is sold as a medusa retelling, and where I can see the resemblance, I see it as more of a Brothers Grimm-like tale that parents would read to their children before bed. The story had the right amount of scary that kept me on my toes and had me thinking of snakes, days after I finished the book.

Milla was my favourite character. She was brave and badass, which made her interesting to read about. When her world was only a small barn, she knew that there was so much more than what her parents told her, and she sought out the truth no matter the danger it may bring. She was also inspiring in the way that she dealt with the curses, demons and her abusive family. Even when she should be frightened out of her wits, she still managed to keep herself together and fight for what was right.

The Cold is in Her Bones was a spooky tale of overcoming monsters and curses, and fighting for what you believe is right. I can not wait to see what Peternelle van Arsdale has in store for us next.

Rating:

Favourite Quotes:

"Speak of evil and you call it to you. That’s what demons want."

Recommend to People Who Enjoy:

Young Adult, Paranormal, Demons, Monsters, Curses, The Witch (The movie)

This scene gives a little hint of one of the ways the Medusa story comes out in my novel. This is a scene involving Milla, my sixteen year old protagonist, and her mother, Gitta.

Gitta stood behind Milla’s chair, pulling her comb through Milla’s dense, nearly black coils of hair.

Then Gitta stopped. “What is…”

Milla felt Gitta’s fingertips searching her scalp just above her left ear. Then a sharp pinch. “Ouch, Mamma!”

Gitta sucked in her breath. “Lord protect us from demons Lord protect us from demons Lord protect us from demons.” Gitta held something that squirmed between her two fingers. A tiny, emerald green snake, the length of her pinky, with a brilliant dot of crimson red blood on its tail end.

Milla said, “That was in my hair?”

Gitta shook her head. “No. No. Lord protect us from demons Lord protect us from demons Lord protect us from demons.” Gitta dropped the snake to the floor and crushed it beneath her heel. “It was growing from your head.”

Gitta grasped Milla by both shoulders. “You must not speak a word of this. You must behave. Be a good girl. A very good girl. It’s the only way to keep you safe. To keep you here. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mamma, I understand.”

Milla awakened the next morning just as night was paling into dawn. She touched the spot on her head, just above her left ear, where Mamma had ripped out the snake. She remembered the way the tail end of the snake had dripped blood. Was it hers or the snake’s? Or did their blood flow together—was it one and the same?

She expected to find a sore spot there. A break in the skin. A tender place. Instead, she sensed movement that wasn’t her own, and something smooth and cool and dry wrapped itself around her finger.

The snake had grown back.

Peternelle van Arsdale grew up in Newark, New Jersey, where she attended public school through the eighth grade. After that she attended three high schools in three different towns in four years, was deeply unpopular, and counted the seconds until graduation. She majored in English literature at Bryn Mawr College, and then landed in book publishing, thinking it was a good way to be paid to do what she liked to do anyway (she was only partly wrong). She worked her way up from editorial assistant to executive editor of adult fiction and nonfiction, and eventually struck out on her own as an independent editor.

Her first young adult novel, The Beast Is an Animal, is being developed by Amazon Studios for a feature film produced by Ridley Scott’s Scott Free and directed by Bert & Bertie. Her essays have been published by LitHub, Hypable.com, and Culturefly, and her short fiction has been published by The Whitefish Review.

Her second novel, The Cold is in Her Bones , will be published in January 2019. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she continues to edit and is at work on her third novel.