Elatsoe
Ratings90
Average rating4
15
Ratings90
Average rating4
A Texas teen comes face-to-face with a cousin’s ghost and vows to unmask the murderer.
Elatsoe—Ellie for short—lives in an alternate contemporary America shaped by the ancestral magics and knowledge of its Indigenous and immigrant groups. She can raise the spirits of dead animals—most importantly, her ghost dog Kirby.
When her beloved cousin dies, all signs point to a car crash, but his ghost tells her otherwise: He was murdered. Who killed him and how did he die?
With the help of her family, her best friend Jay, and the memory great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, Elatsoe must track down the killer and unravel the mystery of this creepy town and its dark past. But will the nefarious townsfolk and a mysterious Doctor stop her before she gets started?
A breathtaking debut novel featuring an asexual, Apache teen protagonist, Elatsoe combines mystery, horror, noir, ancestral knowledge, haunting illustrations, and fantasy elements in one of the most-talked about debuts of the year.
Featured Series
1 primary book2 released booksElatsoe is a 2-book series with 1 primary work first released in 2020 with contributions by Darcie Little Badger.
Reviews with the most likes.
I need a companion book about Ellie's life in the future!! And more about this reality.
I'm curious to know what book everyone else was reading when they described ELATSOE as a whimsical, sweet read
So many great elements here (Lipan Apache culture and history, a well realized magical world, a platonic central friendship, close family relationships and history) but it definitely needed to be edited and marketed for MG because this is not a YA book. Elly reads like she's 12 and the action is very Zoinks/Jinkies/Get ‘Em, Scoob. The dialogue is also sometimes very awkward and weirdly inserted to make plot points - like another character saying Elly is asexual - the only mention of that and a weird way to introduce a pretty major identifier for a character. Elly and Jay are also supposed to be long term best friends that, at times in the dialogue, appear to know very little about each other? The art also contributes to the childlike feel of the book. A ProjectLit selection that I'm not quite sure how to sell to teens.
I loved it, it was pretty fun and interesting, learned a lot about the Lipan Apache people, and found the setting to be unique. it was a fantasy paranormal mystery, how cool is that? set in a world where the magical and paranormal are pretty normal, and it had no romance which for a YA book it's very rare, so I loved it even more! Elatsoe (Ellie) was so cool, I liked her!
Featured Prompt
37 booksBooks written by authors who identify as First Nations, Alaskan Native, Native American, Indígena, First Peoples, Aboriginal, and other Indigenous peoples of North and South America.
