My Lips, Her Voice

Madrid’s spooky debut effortlessly unspools a supernatural mystery across two timelines, twining a present-day haunting with a decades-old brush with something mysterious lurking in the woods. Told from the perspectives of three women, the creepy tale opens in queer-friendly Copper City, where teenager Audrey Hennessey is shocked by the murder of her cousin Mara Quinn, whose body is discovered in the town’s abandoned mine. Mara’s ghost soon takes up residence in Audrey’s body, determined to avenge her death. But Mara is easily distracted by her on-off girlfriend, Zadie Slade, whom she spies flirting with Rhea Uckleman, daughter of the local police chief. When schoolmate Isabel Walls goes missing, Audrey and Zadie fear Mara’s killer has claimed his next victim. Every third chapter flashes back half a century to Audrey and Mara’s grandmother Shirley as she experiences inexplicable visions. These flashbacks aren’t quite as arresting as the main narrative, until, as the connection between the two story lines becomes clear, Shirley’s fuzzy premonitions snap into startling focus. Madrid uses the familiar genre trappings of murder and possession to dig into questions of consent and power, asking what it means to share a body, a connection, or a heritage. Add in some wonderfully complex female leads, and this is a pleasure. (Oct.)