The Turning Book 1: What Curiosity Kills

by Helen Ellis

Overview

"What Curiosity Kills…cracks open the world of Upper East Side prep-schoolers and literally turns it wild, bringing together the best parts of Gossip Girl, Twilight, and Buffy The Vampire Slayer… funny, fierce, and full of surprises."

—Hannah Tinti, ALA Alex Award-winning auth or of The Good ThiefNobody can know your secret.

Nobody can know your power.

But if nobody knows who you are to begin with…what's stopping you?

I whisper, "What's so special about me all of a sudden?"

Nick says, "The Turning."

Mary feels different, but can't explain why. The fainting, the strange cravings…and worse, the things she's noticed about her body.

Mary doesn't know where to turn. If she tells her parents or her sister, she'll risk losing everything. She has no other family, no way of knowing if what she's going through is normal. Everyone she's ever known and loved could reject her…

"Helen Ellis is the kind of writer that makes the pages fly and the kind of friend readers will wish they had growing up."

—Hannah Tinti, ALA Alex Award-winning auth or of The Good Thief

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781402253676
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	05/01/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	904 KB
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

HELEN ELLIS is the author of Eating the Cheshire Cat, a Southern Gothic about three teenage girls and the Alabama Society that twisted them. The novel was picked for B&N Discover Great New Writers, ABA Booksense 76, and the Los Angeles Times and Southern Critics Circle Best Book of the Year. The book is currently being optioned for film by director Amy Redford.

Read an Excerpt

I want to scream for help, but pain that feels like fire ants has found me. The ants crawl up and out of my knee socks and take over every bit of my flesh. They are between my toes, behind my ears, and in every crevice in between. They scamper across my scalp. They bite. Their bites are unbearable. I twist and scratch within the suffocating comforter. I'm trapped.

The boys lean over me, say things—to me, to each other—I can't make out. My hearing is fading. I'm shrinking. The boys' faces get bigger and rise like moons. One of them blinks. When his eyes close, they are chestnut. Open, they are emerald green. He smiles, parts his teeth, and unrolls a long, narrow pink tongue. He licks the tips of his incisors, which have grown past his lower gums to form fine points.

He purrs, his voice velvet. He says, "Don't worry, Kitty. There are no such things as vampires."

Editorial Reviews

Reading Ellis’s prose is like listening to a Robin Williams monologue—it’s high energy and high anxiety—with a Southern twist. This is the voice of Mary Richards, a 16-year-old from Alabama, who has been adopted into a wealthy New York City family. Mary remembers enough of her troubled past to appreciate her good fortune, but has lost any sense of the strangeness of her privileged bubble. Preoccupied with friends’ teasing, rivalry with her African-American sister (also an adoptee), and a crush on her classmate, Nick, she feels like an ordinary teenager. Until, that is, she begins to transform into a cat. Then the edgy patter turns hallucinogenic, erotic, and murderous. Imaginatively, it’s impressive: an urban fantasy with original and consistent world-building, which bodes well for later books in the Turning series. Between frequent references to 1980s pop culture and the finer points of life on the Upper East Side and the book’s more gruesome (though not gratuitous) moments, Ellis seems to be writing for an older audience—and, for them, she is writing very well. Ages 12-up. (May)

Publishers Weekly

""There is an undercurrent of chaste eroticism that Twilight series' fans will recognize... The blend of contemporary realism and fantasy, romance, humor, and adrenaline-charged action is sure to hook an eager teen audience."" - Booklist

"It's impressive: an urban fantasy with original and consistent world-building, which bodes well for later books in the Turning series...
--Publishers Weekly" - Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

"There is an undercurrent of chaste eroticism that Twilight series' fans will recognize... The blend of contemporary realism and fantasy, romance, humor, and adrenaline-charged action is sure to hook an eager teen audience."

Booklist

Sophmore Mary Richards can't explain her purring in Pilates, her sudden desire to lap up spilled milk or the strange orange fur growing on her legs until she meets with her crush, Nick Martin, who reveals that she is undergoing "the turning" into a cat. While she learns more about the five-year process (which smoking pot can help alleviate but not fully suppress) and the ongoing feud between domestics and strays, former-classmate-now-cat Yoon, who stays turned as long as possible, tantalizes her inner feline. The convoluted story, the first in a series, continues as Octavia, her African-American, fellow adopted sister, puts aside her intense fear of cats and drags Mary to the used bookstore in the basement of the Webster Library to find answers from Mrs. Wrinkles, a sphynx reference librarian with a blind human protector. The author's attempts at humor, with satirical commentaries on aging parents' fertility problems, and horror, with bloody catfights, combine with Octavia's use of the "race card" to fall flat, leaving readers turned off. (Urban fantasy. YA)

Kirkus Reviews