Slice of Cherry

by Dia Reeves

Overview

Perfect for fans of Lisa Frankenstein and Bones and All, this “brutally beautiful” (Cassandra Clare) coming-of-rage horror novel about girl villains and monstrosity follows two sisters...and their growing body count—now with a brand-new look!

Kit and Fancy Cordelle are sisters of the best kind: best friends, confidantes, and accomplices. Daughters of the infamous Bonesaw Killer, Kit and Fancy are used to feeling like outsiders, and that’s just the way they like it. But in their otherworldly East Texan town, where the weird and wild run rampant, they are hardly the oddest or most dangerous creatures around.

Despite their mother’s efforts to curtail their worst impulses, Kit and Fancy eventually give into their deepest, most secret desire—the desire to kill. What starts as a fascination with slicing open and stitching up quickly spirals into a gratifying murder spree. Of course, the sisters aren’t killing just anyone—only the people who truly deserve it. But the girls have learned from the mistakes of their father and know that any shred of evidence could get them caught.

So when Fancy stumbles upon a gateway into another world, she opens a door to the perfect body disposal...and to endless possibilities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781665973885
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Publication date:	06/10/2025
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	528
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.70(d)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Dia Reeves (1977–2019) was the author of many sci-fi, fantasy, and horror novels for teens, including Bleeding Violet, Slice of Cherry, and Heartsick. She lived in Texas and worked as a librarian.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One
From Fancy’s dream diary:

Daddy stood at the front door screaming for Kit and me to let him in. Kit told me to run and get Madda, so I tried, but Madda wasn’t in her room. Her bed was unmade and spits of blood stained her sheets. I ran back to the front door, but now Kit was gone, and the door was wide open. And Daddy was dragging her down into the storm cellar by her feet.

Editorial Reviews

Reeves returns to her fictional East Texas town of Portero for a tale more gruesome, disturbing and shamelessly enjoyable than Bleeding Violet...somehow, in this orgy of gore, a touching coming-of-age tale emerges, as the two emotionally stunted young women connect with community. The warm, fuzzy moral—that it's fine to be a serial killer as long as you're doing it to help others—will delight and entertain readers mature enough to appreciate that fictional morals needn't always coincide with real-life didacticism. This gleeful page-turner is a winner.

Kirkus Reviews

"Violently cathartic and narratively intimate, Slice of Cherry is unlike anything I've ever read. I found myself laughing one page and horrified the next—Kit and Fancy have slashed and slung their way into my mind and won't be leaving anytime soon. A bloody spectacle!"

Courtney Gould

Reeves’ women are stunning—brazening through life on a mixture of sexuality, vulnerability, instability, and brilliance that serves them well as they encounter monsters literal and figurative, internal and external.

BCCB

Reeves, experimenting with a much darker side of magical realism, definitely has plenty of ideas. The vividly created fantasy world in which buried victims grow into beautiful trees is fully engaging...[f]ans of Showtime’s Dexter series will be thoroughly engrossed.

School Library Journal

Slice of Cherry is earnestly macabre, with razor-sharp characterizations in a sugar-sweet coat of moral ambiguity. [T]here is nothing mundane about this delectable novel...Reeves’ prose is dreamlike, strange, and bewitching as she effortlessly tells a story about some rather gory and unsavory subjects in a deceptively blasé manner. Be warned that Slice of Cherry is not for the faint of heart...if you, like me, delight in the absurd and the grotesque; if you’ve ever felt like you just don’t quite adhere to the tastes of the norm; if you like complicated and darkness...well, you might wanna cut yourself off a Slice of Cherry.

The Book Smugglers

"Whimsically dark and impossible to put down, SLICE OF CHERRY is a beautifully written and bloody coming-of-age tale starring two weird sisters on a murder spree out of love. Definitely a must-read."

Jamison Shea

"Wicked, violent and utterly enthralling, Slice of Cherry is a portrait of adolescence that turns the stomach and races the heart. A rerelease so fresh and delicious, everyone deserves another chance to take a bite."

Kayla Ancrum

A memory and utterly twisted coming-of-age story...soaked in the paranormal—and blood.”

Publishers Weekly

"Brutally beautiful — not like anything else you'll read this year, or any other."

Cassandra Clare

Twisted and creepy, this book is not for the faint of heart. Reeves sets no boundaries for herself, as readers witness the strange mind of a serial killer, possibly changing all perceptions of love and murder. Horrifyingly beautiful.”

Romantic Times

"Brutally beautiful — not like anything else you'll read this year, or any other."
- Cassandra Clare, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Clockwork Angel

Reeves, Dia
Slice of Cherry
Simon Pulse, 2011 [512p] R* Gr. 9-12

Always close, sisters Kit and Fancy bond even more tightly after the Bonesaw Killer, their father, is convicted of multiple murders. They rarely even notice the fact that they are outsiders (even in the wacked-out town of Portero, where portals let in monsters and the townsfolk are never surprised by anything) as they fill their days with increasingly violent acts. Those acts seem to feed something in each of them, even though they also rid the town of bad guys (though occasionally their standards slip to include someone who could, perhaps, have done just fine with a stern talking to rather than . . . death). In come two brothers with enough secrets of their own to rival the girls’, and suddenly romance mixes with gore, and love threatens to separate the sisters. The use of entries in Fancy’s dream journal as chapter starts is a bit contrived, but it nevertheless works well to add insight into Fancy’s brain, revealing her to be less obviously violent than Kit but much more disturbed overall. While the girls quietly use a parallel universe to perform horrific murders, their mother, a strong, proud woman who both loves her girls and occasionally fears them, keeps them in check and attempts, in her own eloquently mysterious ways (some supernatural, some strict maternal) to save her girls from whatever it is they need saving from. Reeves’ women are stunning—brazening through life on a mixture of sexuality, vulnerability, instability, and brilliance that serves them well as they encounter monsters literal and figurative, internal and external. Fans of Reeves’ first novel, Bleeding Violet (BCCB 3/10), will relish a second, though no more complete, glimpse at the deeply fascinating town of Portero and its bizarre, memorable residents. AS
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, January 2011

"Twisted and creepy, this book is not for the faint of heart. Reeves sets no boundaries for herself, as readers witness the strange mind of a serial killer, possibly changing all perceptions of love and murder. Horrifyingly beautiful, the small, monster-driven town of Portero is rendered in the most captivating way. " —Romantic Times

"Reeves returns to her fictional East Texas town of Portero for a tale more gruesome, disturbing and shamelessly enjoyable than Bleeding Violet...Somehow, in this orgy of gore, a touching coming-of-age tale emerges, as the two emotionally stunted young women connect with community. The warm, fuzzy moral—that it's fine to be a serial killer as long as you're doing it to help others—will delight and entertain readers mature enough to appreciate that fictional morals needn't always coincide with real-life didacticism. This gleeful page-turner is a winner." - KIRKUS

"This is a memorable and utterly twisted coming-of-age story that reads like Dexter for (mature) teens, soaked in the paranormal—and blood."—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Reeves returns to her fictional East Texas town of Portero for a tale more gruesome, disturbing and shamelessly enjoyable thanBleedingViolet(2009). Sisters Kit and Fancy are so close they're like the same person. They don't need anyone but each other—convenient, as they've been shunned by the townsfolk since their serial-killer father was arrested. A home invasion starts the sisters on a spree of magically enhanced torture and killing, focused on rapists, domestic abusers and would-be murderers. Soon, previously aloof neighbors hail the girls as public servants. Meanwhile, their sisterly closeness erodes: At a Juneteenth celebration, Fancy discovers newly murderous magical powers, while Kit shows an increasing interest in boys instead of murder. Somehow, in this orgy of gore, a touching coming-of-age tale emerges, as the two emotionally stunted young women connect with community. The warm, fuzzy moral—that it's fine to be a serial killer as long as you're doing it to help others—will delight and entertain readers mature enough to appreciate that fictional morals needn't always coincide with real-life didacticism. This gleeful page-turner is a winner.(Urban fantasy. YA)

Kirkus Reviews