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ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: Kill Creatures
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BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://itsrorypower.com/
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: SATA 365
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Middlebury College; University of East Anglia, M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Has worked as a crime fiction editor and story consultant for fiction-to-television adaptation projects.
WRITINGS
Author of the novel Longyear.
SIDELIGHTS
Rory Power is an American writer who grew up in New England. She studied writing at the University of East Anglia and has worked as a crime fiction editor and story consultant for fiction-to-television adaptation projects. Power primarily writes speculative young-adult fiction.
In an interview in Kid Lit 411, Power discussed how she gets in the mood to write. “I use music a lot to help me with getting in the right frame of mind. Every project I work on has a separate playlist. … And then sometimes I’ll make a character specific playlist.” Power clarified that “it helps me keep the tone consistent from moment to moment across the project.” Power also reflected on how she approaches the darker elements in her stories in an interview in Musing. She confessed: “I definitely struggle with this sometimes, and the key for me has been finding a balance between how any given aspect of a book hits the reader and how it hits the characters.”
Power published her first novel, the queer horror thriller Wilder Girls, in 2019. Set in the near future at the Raxter School for Girls boarding school on a remote Maine island, the story deals with issues of trust in institutions as an unusual and deadly mutating illness infects everyone. Sixteen-year-old Hetty was one of the first students to suffer from the Tox when her right eye sealed itself shut. Her best friend, Byatt, ended up with a second spine that grew outside of her body. Some conditions were more serious than others, but few girls survived a visit to the infirmary when their health took a turn for the worse. When Byatt is sent to the infirmary, Hetty realizes that she cannot trust the CDC to help and takes matters into her own hands.
In an interview in Renontheroad, Power reflected on the significance of the friendship bond between Hetty and Byatt. Power admitted that that bond “is crucial to the book. It drives everything Hetty does, but also carries a lot of Byatt’s point of view, where what we learn about her is surprising relative to what we already know from Hetty. I think the two girls and their friendship really hold the book together.”
Writing in BookPage, Hannah Lamb insisted that “Power is particularly adept at illustrating the dynamics of female friendship, as well as exploring queer romantic relationships.” Lamb called it “refreshing” due to Power’s portrayal of the strength of the female characters. A Kirkus Reviews contributor found the novel to be “part survival thriller, part post-apocalyptic romance, and part ecocritical feminist manifesto,” adding that it is “a staggering gut punch of a book.”
In 2020 Power published her second novel, Burn Our Bodies Down. Margot Nielsen has lived a relatively isolated life, knowing no other family member other than her strange mother. Margot deals with her quirky personality but jumps at the opportunity to learn more about her family history when she discovers she has a grandmother in a nearby town. Her grandmother is just as odd and mysterious as her mother, though, leaving Margot determined to get to the bottom of her family’s dark secrets.
A Kirkus Reviews contributor concluded by calling Burn Our Bodies Down “a sinister story about the vicious cycle of generational abuse that falters under the weight of an unwieldy plot.” Booklist contributor Maggie Reagan stated: “Gritty and strange, this sophomore novel is utterly compelling.” Reagan also observed that “a late sf twist folds seamlessly into the character-driven story.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 1, 2020, Maggie Reagan, review of Burn Our Bodies Down, p. 63.
BookPage, August 1, 2019, Hannah Lamb, review of Wilder Girls, p. 28.
Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2019, review of Wilder Girls; May 15, 2020, review of Burn Our Bodies Down.
ONLINE
American Booksellers Association website, https://www.bookweb.org/ (November 4, 2020), Jill Sweeney-Bosa, author interview.
Book Bratz, https://thebookbratz.blogspot.com/ (May 5, 2019), author interview.
Inkblotters, https://theinkblotters.com/ (June 25, 2019), author interview and review of Wilder Girls.
Kid Lit 411, http://www.kidlit411.com/ (July 12, 2019), author interview.
Musing, https://parnassusmusing.net/ (July 15, 2020), author interview.
Nerd Daily, https://www.thenerddaily.com/ (July 7, 2019), Elise Dumpleton, author interview.
Renontheroad, https://www.renontheroad.com/ (November 4, 2020), author interview.
Rory Power website, https://itsrorypower.com (November 4, 2020).
Texas Teen Book Festival website, https://texasteenbookfestival.org/ (August 6, 2019), author interview.
YA Sh3lf, http://www.yash3lf.com/ (February 27, 2019), author interview.*
Press Kit
Short Bio
Rory Power lives in Rhode Island. She has an MA in prose fiction from the University of East Anglia, and is the New York Times bestselling author of Wilder Girls, Burn Our Bodies Down, Kill Creatures, and The Windup Garden duology.
Rory Power
Rory Power grew up in Boston, received her undergraduate degree at Middlebury College, and went on to earn an MA in prose fiction from the University of East Anglia. She lives in Massachusetts. Wilder Girls is her first novel. To learn more about Rory, go to itsrorypower.com and follow @itsrorypower on Twitter and Instagram.
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction, Young Adult Fantasy
Series
Wind-up Garden
1. In a Garden Burning Gold (2022)
2. In an Orchard Grown from Ash (2023)
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Novels
Wilder Girls (2019)
Burn Our Bodies Down (2020)
Kill Creatures (2025)
Series contributed to
Critical Role
Vox Machina--Stories Untold (2025) (with others)
Rory Power on writing Adult VS. YA
By Kate Oldfield On Apr 6, 2022
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This post was written by Rory Power, author of In a Garden Burning Gold.
I have two standard answers when asked what my favorite books were as a kid: the Redwall series, by Brian Jacques, and the Wheel of Time series, by Robert Jordan (and later finished by Brandon Sanderson). One is a series intended for grade school children, the other an adult fantasy; I never quite timed it right to catch anything in between.
When I first really encountered YA, I was in my early 20s, fresh off a few years that had cut close to the bone. Every young adult book that I read had that immediacy, that first-ever feeling, that sense that everything – a bad day at school or a cataclysmic life change – resonated on an equal scale. That, I decided, was what I wanted from my writing. Some way to convey how my life had felt: breakneck and too bright.
My family are athletes, as I was growing up; there was lots of talk in my house about fast twitch and slow twitch muscles. Every time I sat down to write, I could feel those fast twitch muscles working, building a voice that functioned in fragments, in horror, in acceleration.
But as it turns out, muscles get tired. I began In a Garden Burning Gold in 2017, in the month after selling my debut novel Wilder Girls. I had been working on Wilder Girls for about a year at that point, and I could feel my brain and body both aching for something different, something requiring a different muscle group. On a whim, I retreated into the kind of fantasy that I’ve loved so much since I was young.
I made a few rules for myself before I started. I was going to use third person, rather than first. I was going to use dual points of view, and one of them would be a man (which, if you’ve read Wilder Girls, you will recognize as the stretch that it was for me). And most importantly – to me, anyway – I was not going to use scene breaks.
Wilder Girls and my second young adult novel, Burn Our Bodies Down, are littered with scene breaks. They are, to me, the ultimate fast twitch tool. Spending too long in a scene? Break it. Don’t worry about transitions. Want to slip in some imagery that you can’t find room for? Drop it in its own tiny little paragraph and break immediately after. A scene break forces a breath from the reader, forces a pause just long enough for the reader to look over their shoulder, or look anxiously ahead, and it is incredibly useful, but to write a new kind of book, I had to set it aside.
In a Garden Burning Gold moves differently. Not only is it literally longer, but it favors perspective over immediacy, and broadness of scope over a zoomed-in lens. When I read parts of it back, I can feel myself breathing deeply. I can see myself stepping around a fragmented idea or image and instead sinking into the sentences more fully. (I can also see myself wishing, sometimes, that I could just use a scene break, but rules are rules.)
It is a new kind of book for me, a new kind of voice, but still the writing of it felt like walking into a just-discovered room in my house and realizing that I’ve already been there once before, the memory just hazy enough that the view from the window is still a surprise. And in a sense, that’s what I hope readers take from it too. A welcoming, and a little surprise, too.
Q&A: Rory Power, Author of ‘In a Garden Burning Gold’
Elise Dumpleton·Writers Corner·April 19, 2022·3 min read
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Twins imbued with incredible magic and near-immortality will do anything to keep their family safe—even if it tears the siblings apart—in the first book of a mythic epic fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of Wilder Girls.
We had the pleasure of chatting with Rory Power about her latest book release In A Garden Burning Gold, along with writing, book recommendations, and more!
Hi, Rory! Thanks for joining us again! We last spoke in 2019, so other than that rigmarole we continue to deal with, what have you been up to in the last three years?
Thank you so much for having me back! I’ve been writing, reading, watching a lot of TV, and doing battle with my cat, Scallion, who joined the household in 2020 and has been making it her own ever since.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
I grew up in a house full of books, which taught me to love reading from a young age, and as is the case for a lot of writers, that really left a mark on me. I think I started writing stories down when I was five or six!
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
Martin the Warrior by Brian Jacques! … Martin the Warrior by Brian Jacques! (Is it cheating if I use the same one twice? Don’t answer that.) And Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.
Your new novel, In a Garden Burning Gold, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
I think I’ll go with: family, betrayal, intricacy, politics, and growth.
What can readers expect?
You can expect a new kind of voice from me as compared to my young adult work, a sprawling world to get lost in, and a quartet of siblings who love and hate each other in equal amounts.
Where did the inspiration for In a Garden Burning Gold come from?
I drew a lot of my inspiration from my family’s history in Greece. We’re from the northwest, and the history there, particularly during the 15th-19th centuries, is unique – the area was able to stay fairly distinct even under Ottoman rule. I took a lot of that and worked it into the world that Garden inhabits.
Can you tell us a bit about the challenges you faced while writing and how you were able to overcome them?
This is the longest thing I’ve ever written (except the sequel, which I just finished drafting a few weeks ago!) and the biggest challenge for me was keeping track of all the moving pieces over a larger work. I had to get a lot better at taking notes and marking down important phrases or pieces of information.
See also
Q&A: Lori Brand, Author of ‘Bodies To Die For’
Were there any favourite moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved writing Chrysanthi, the youngest of the four siblings – I’m a youngest sibling myself, so I relished any opportunity to really give her a chance to shine. And she’ll have a lot more time to do that in the sequel!
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you have received?
I think the worst advice I’ve gotten was when someone told me not to write every day, but that’s just because I’ve found that writing every day works for me. That advice would probably be very good advice for someone else! And I think that’s kind of the best advice I’ve ever gotten: trust your gut, and know that what works for you might not always be what works for other people.
What’s next for you?
The sequel to In a Garden Burning Gold will be out in the next year, and I’ll also be diving back into young adult! More to come soon!
Lastly, do you have any 2022 book recommendations for our readers?
Loved Rosiee Thor’s Fire Becomes Her, and Liz Parker’s In the Shadow Garden (all Garden titles are good titles).
Q&A: Rory Power, Author of ‘Kill Creatures’
Emily M·Writers Corner·June 9, 2025·4 min read
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Today we chat with Rory Power, the New York Times bestseller of speculative fiction such as Wilder Girls, Burn Our Bodies Down, and In a Garden Burning Gold. Her latest novel Kill Creatures follows Nan a year on from the mysterious disappearance of her three best friends in Saltcedar Canyon when one of them suddenly returns. Everybody is overjoyed, except Nan, who was pretty sure they were dead. After all, she’s the one who killed them.
Hi Rory, thank you for joining us today! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and your latest book Kill Creatures?
Thank you so much for having me! I’m Rory Power and I write fiction that ranges from adult epic fantasy to young adult thrillers. My hobbies include using too much garlic when I cook, documenting every second of my cat’s life, and scouring my city for the best caprese sandwich. Kill Creatures, my latest book, is a YA thriller about a girl named Nan and what happens when the girl she thought she killed shows back up alive.
This has such a fantastic and hooky premise – I’d love to know what sparked the idea?
This idea was a combination of a lot of things—sort of like opening your junk drawer and finding that the items you left in there have formed something entirely new. I’d had “canyon” on a list of interesting potential settings for a while, and as I was researching, I learned about Lake Powell and the flooding of Glen Canyon, which I found so interesting. I was also hugely inspired by a photograph by Neil Krug called Phantom: Stage One, Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, the Pretty Little Liars TV show, and the story of the Pied Piper.
Nan is such a fascinating protagonist with plenty of secrets she’s trying to hide, not least the deaths she caused. Where did her voice come from and what was it like writing from her perspective?
Finding Nan’s voice was really about digging into the absurdity of her situation. When we meet her, she’s done something so horrible that the way she gauges the world has shifted; her reactions and emotions are always a little out of step with other people’s because for her the stakes are so different. There’s also an edge of nihilism to her voice that can almost be funny sometimes, and I had a lot of fun leaning into that.
This is a propulsive and compelling thriller with plenty of moving pieces to keep track of. What is the plotting process like for you?
Usually, when I start a book, I only have a very vague sketch of the plot in my head. I’ve found that if I plan ahead too much, I lose what makes the process engaging for me. That does mean that I often have to rework drafts to keep everything cohesive, but I leave notes in the margins as I go about what needs doing, which helps me knit the threads together.
What surprised you while writing this book?
The epilogue surprised me, actually! I didn’t know it was true, so to speak, until I wrote it for the first time. That was one of those things where as soon as I figured it out, I had to go back through the draft and retrace my steps, but I’m so glad I did; it’s one of my favorite parts of the book now.
What songs would form the soundtrack to Kill Creatures for you?
“Into Dust” by Mazzy Star is high on my playlist for the book, as is the live version of Alanis Morissette covering “King of Pain,” which is originally by The Police. Also a lot of songs off Halsey’s album If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power.
Unreliable narrators are one of my favourite narrative devices and have been at play in your work. What’s it like using the device and who are some of your favourite writers who utilise unreliable narrators in their work?
I love making my narrators unreliable—it’s a fun way to create tension in a story, but I think it’s also a way to really make a character human. We’re all unreliable narrators in our own lives, to some degree, and using that device for my fiction makes the characters feel that much more real to me. E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars is one of my favorite examples of that (and another great summer YA thriller read!), as is Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. And if you’ve already read those, check out Rebecca Barrow’s The Tournament, out later this month!
See also
Q&A: Lori Brand, Author of ‘Bodies To Die For’
What books have you enjoyed so far this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on?
I loved Wake the Wild Creatures by Nova Ren Suma, which came out in May. And I know I said this already, but I highly recommend The Tournament!
If possible, can you share a little about what you are currently working on or any upcoming projects you have?
Right now I’m working on something secret that’s a little bizarre and a lot of fun. After I finish that I’ll be working on a new YA!
Finally, if you could only use five words to describe Kill Creatures, what would they be?
Propulsive, twisty, dream-like, surprising, lilac
Rory Power: In Defense of Murderous Main Characters
'I have very little shock in me anymore. The question of "who would do such a thing?" feels asked and answered.'
June 5, 2025 By Rory Power
Via Delacorte
N.B. (1): For our purposes here today I will use “crime fiction” as a catch-all term for thrillers, mysteries, and variations thereof.
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N.B. (2): References below to assorted crime fiction tropes are made with great fondness and appreciation.
N.B. (3): If you or a person of your acquaintance worked in the costume department for the television adaptation of Sara Shepard’s Pretty Little Liars, please be in touch with me immediately regarding the hats in season one.
As a writer with a new book coming out, there are a few things I have freshly added to my to-do list. Stockpile photos of myself holding my book while dressed in nice clothes so nobody will realize I usually just alternate between two Old Navy crewnecks. Redownload Instagram to my phone, but make sure to hide it in a folder to keep from scrolling all day. Sketch out some responses to questions I am likely to get asked at book events so that I don’t come across like an airhead.
That last one is especially important, because I’ve learned that questions like “What inspired you?” demand a certain kind of answer. People want me to tell them about the photograph I saw and saved to my phone (a selection from Phantom: Stage One by Neil Krug) or the cult-classic movie my mother talked about all the time growing up (Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock). Generally speaking, they seem distinctly less impressed when I say, “It was a lot of things all smashed together into clay and then fired in the kiln of this one month where I was rewatching the ABC Family show Pretty Little Liars and kept getting mad because they wouldn’t let the titular liars just straight up murder people.”
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Frustrated as I was during my rewatch, I understand why it had to be that way. Advertisers, the fact that “family” is in the name of the network, a young audience, etc. But I think it’s also a function of the genre that Pretty Little Liars occupies. During a stint as an editorial assistant at a crime fiction imprint, my then-boss described the genre as a way to uphold society, to reinforce what we traditionally understand to be moral and good. We watch as our social mores are broken, then watch as the world is put back in order. Let the grizzled detective with an estranged daughter and a secret personal connection to the case reassure you that what lurks in the woods cannot reach you here at the village fire.
In that context—crime fiction as fable, as a modern morality play—there’s a specific story beat that fascinates me. You will probably recognize it just as you did our grizzled detective. Picture our main character waking up after a night out. She can’t remember where she was, but there’s blood under her fingernails, which isn’t a good sign. She waves it off, tells a breezy lie to her coworkers, only to learn that her boyfriend was murdered last night. My God, she thinks, looking at herself in the bathroom mirror. Was that me? Did I do it?
Well, no. Or rather, almost never. And if she did, it was probably self-defense, or because her boyfriend was a bad person and he deserved it.
The beat functions in the same way crime fiction at large does, puncturing our sense of safety and then sealing that puncture up. But where crime fiction tells us that our world is ultimately good, this smaller story beat tells us that we ourselves are good. Consciously or otherwise, readers are inclined to connect with, relate to, and even identify with a story’s main character. When a protagonist doubts her inherent goodness, that doubt echoes off the page and into the reader; when she is comforted, so are we. Don’t worry, Pretty Little Liars says as one of its leads realizes that instead of killing her friend, she only waved a field hockey stick menacingly in said friend’s direction. Spencer Hastings is a good person, and you are, too.
These days, that reassurance feels flimsy. Recent years (and, one might well argue, a great many of the years preceding them) seem defined by watching the proverbial line in the sand be crossed over and over again. I have very little shock in me anymore. The question of “who would do such a thing?” feels asked and answered.
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As somebody who writes whodunits, this is a particular sort of troublesome. In 2022, as I tried to brainstorm for a new book, it was a knot I couldn’t quite untangle to my satisfaction. It wasn’t until I sat there rewatching Spencer and her field hockey stick that the knot finally gave.
In my young adult novel Kill Creatures, the main character Nan opens with a clear confession. A year ago, she says, she murdered her three best friends. She misses them, yes, but she wouldn’t change it, and she isn’t sorry. That question, asked and answered. Who would do such a thing? Nan would. Nan did.
Starting from that fact completely broke the book open for me. With that foundation of Nan’s character in place, I could reframe the story, free readers from the responsibility of serving as Nan’s judge and jury, and focus on the questions that interested me most: How do we carry on through life without the shield of our assumed goodness? What comes after guilt? And, as ever, where do we go from here?
The thing is, it’s a short book; I didn’t exactly have time to find all the answers. I could only find Nan’s. Maybe, if you read Kill Creatures, you’ll find yours.
In a Garden Burning Gold
Rory Power. Del Rey, $27 (432p) ISBN 978-0-593-35497-1
Bestselling YA author Power makes her adult debut (after Burn Our Bodies Down) with this sprawling, tragic fantasy about the intergenerational legacy of familial abuse told through the eyes of twin siblings Rhea and Alexandras "Lexos" Argyros. Their father, Vasilis, seized power in a bloody coup to become the Stratagiozi--or absolute dictator--of Thyzakos. He rules his family with the same despotic ferocity with which he rules his country, and Rhea and Lexos dutifully but reluctantly serve him. Rhea's magic brings about the change of the seasons, but to do so she must murder a consort each year. News of an uprising leads Lexos to urge Rhea to choose its figurehead, Michali Laskaris, as her consort, believing Michali's death will quash the rebellion. Meanwhile, Lexos travels to drum up support for his father amongst other Stratagiozi. The twins' separate quests lead both to question their loyalties as the threats to their family increase. Power creates a distinctive magic system and has a steady hand with the complex geopolitical intrigue, building a fascinating, lived-in world, but the almost Shakespearean tragedy of the blood-soaked plot paints the characters as frustratingly passive. Still, there's plenty to appreciate here. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, Ink Well Management. (Apr.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"In a Garden Burning Gold." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 1, 3 Jan. 2022, pp. 24+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A690097831/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=99594071. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.
In an Orchard Grown from Ash
Rory Power. Del Rey, $28.99 (464p) ISBN 978-0-593-35500-8
Power's blood-soaked and tragic conclusion to the Wind-Up Garden duology (after In a Garden Burning Gold) follows the four royal Argyros siblings--Rhea, Lexos, Nitsos, and Chrysanthi--in the wake of personal and political loss. As Rhea struggles with inhetiting het father's power over death, she vows to hunt down and kill Nitsos for using his power to manipulate her choices. She sends Chrysanthi after Nitsos as part of her bid for revenge, but Chtysanthi's real goal is to reunite her family. Lexos, eager to regain power of his own, allies himself with Ettore, a member of the rival Domina family. Meanwhile, Nitsos seeks to locate the mysterious saints' graves, a goal that soon sweeps up everyone on the continent in a race to either obtain or destroy the fabled power the graves contain. All the siblings independently converge on the saints' final testing place--where doom awaits the family. The author probes even deeper into her series' exploration of power and corruption, but adds a hopeful note amid all the tragedy and destruction that makes the bloodshed feel worthwhile. Series fans will find this a satisfying conclusion. Agent: Kim Witherspvon, InkWell Management. (May)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"In an Orchard Grown from Ash." Publishers Weekly, vol. 270, no. 10, 6 Mar. 2023, p. 37. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A741557969/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3a4dd488. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.
* Power, Rory. In an Orchard Grown from Ash. Del Rey: Ballantine. (The Wind-Up Garden, Bk. 2). May 2023.480p. ISBN 9780593355008. $28.99. FANTASY
Driven from their home and with their father dead, the Argyros siblings find themselves separated by distance and distrust. Lexos is a political prisoner of the Domina family, left on an island alone--almost. His twin Rhea continues to work with the rebel Sxoriza as the other powerful families battle to fill the power vacuum that's left behind. Rhea is also searching for their younger brother, Nitsos, who is responsible for the death of her husband. The youngest, Chrysanthi, always sheltered from much of the world, sets out to find Nitsos too, with concerns he plans to attempt to regain the family power for himself. As the four siblings journey on their own paths of truth, what lies at the end can either free them from the destructive legacy their father left or destroy them all. Revolving points of view highlight the familial love, betrayal, and emotional arcs of the siblings. VERDICT The duology's conclusion (following In a Garden Burning Gold) is a raw, emotional journey of a family created and broken by the consequences of their actions. -- Kristi Chadwick
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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"In an Orchard Grown from Ash." Library Journal, vol. 148, no. 4, Apr. 2023, p. 90. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A744137446/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0ba0817d. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.
Power, Rory KILL CREATURES Delacorte (Teen None) $19.99 6, 3 ISBN: 9780593302316
A teenage girl's secrets and lies come back to haunt her.
In the small lake resort town of Saltcedar, Utah, 17-year-old Nan is reeling from the disappearance of her three best friends, Edie, Jane, and Luce, who went missing during a nighttime hike in a local canyon. One year after their vanishing, Nan, her parents, and the entire town of Saltcedar are attending a vigil for the missing girls when Luce is miraculously found alive--a complete shock to Nan, who's certain she'd killed all three of them. To her extreme relief, Nan learns that Luce doesn't remember anything about what happened to her or where she's been for the last year. As the police try to figure out what happened with the help of both girls, Nan's lies are brought ever closer to unraveling while even darker secrets are brought to the surface, threatening everything Nan knows to be true about her life. Told in alternating timelines from before and after the disappearance, the story has multiple satisfying and unexpected twists and turns, leading to a shocking conclusion. Fans of Power will be happy to find her signature dark, flowing prose in abundance in this unputdownable thriller. The main characters are cued white, and there's some queer representation among the four girls.
A gripping story of obsession and betrayal that will keep readers engrossed from the very first page. (content warnings)(Thriller. 14-18)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Power, Rory: KILL CREATURES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A835106511/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=81db3fa7. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.
* POWER, Rory. Kill Creatures. 288p. Delacorte. Jun. 2025. Tr $19.99. ISBN 9780593302316.
Gr 9 Up--A girl returns after a year missing, and no one is more surprised than her best friend--because she's the one who killed her. While that feels like a big reveal early on, this is a delightfully thrilling look at the lead-up and aftermath of the fateful summer night when best friends Nan, Luce, Edie, and Jane entered Saltcedar Canyon for a swim and only Nan returned. Now, a year later, Luce is plucked out of the lake during a vigil for the missing friends. But why did Nan, whose first-person perspective propels the novel in Now (this summer) and Then (last summer) chapters, do it? And will Luce, suffering from amnesia, remember what happened? Readers who enjoy an unreliable, uncertain, and at times unhinged narrator will love Nan's voice and her simmering rage ("if I ever kill her again, it'll be with my bare hands") as everything she thought was over rises to the surface, along with some secrets even she couldn't fathom. The author explores friendship, fitting in, crushes, revenge, and the lies we tell ourselves in this tight, fast-moving narrative. Skin tone is not described, but Nan has blond hair and blue eyes, Luce has blue eyes and curly red hair, Edie has dark hair and "quicksilver" eyes, and Jane has dark hair. There is LGBTQIA+ representation in the main cast. Hand to fans of Rebecca Stafford's Rabbit & Juliet and Megan Lally's No Place to Hide. VERDICT Unique and unputdownable. Essential for thriller fans.--Amanda Mastrull
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
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Mastrull, Amanda. "POWER, Rory. Kill Creatures." School Library Journal, vol. 71, no. 5, May 2025, pp. 135+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A846210282/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=12f5e74a. Accessed 7 Nov. 2025.