How to Survive a Horror Movie

Transfer student Charley is the new kid at Harrogate School for Girls, a former 13th-century monastery turned boarding academy off the coast of Ireland. Charley thinks she’s lucked out with her assigned roommate Olive, who shares Charley’s passion for all things horror. They strike up a tradition called Slasher Saturday, during which they watch old horror movies and Charley pretends she doesn’t miss the life she left behind on the mainland. One such Saturday, Charley sees a figure in black standing outside in the rain before the school loses power. The next day, she finds classmate Hannah dead at the bottom of a cliff. The discovery becomes the first in a series of deaths the school claims are accidents, though Charley believes them to have supernatural causes. Each chapter of Dunmore’s delightfully meta debut opens with a tip on how to stay alive in a horror film: “Rule #1 Team Up”; “Rule #2 Beware of Storms and Isolated Islands.” Plentiful wry humor keeps things light, even as confident text unveils gruesome violence, gory deaths, and genuinely frightening scares, making this a standout addition to the canon of teen slasher novels. Main characters read as white. Ages 14–up. (Sept.)