Book Review - The Replacement

This is Brenna Yovanoff's very first Novel and its brilliant!!!

The Replacement is deliciously dark and spooky, with a sensitive hero and absorbing story.

Mackie Doyle just wants to fit in, but he’s a replacement – left behind in the place of a human child.  It’s kind of an open secret – Mackie’s family and close friends know what he is, but it’s never talked about.  In fact, the whole town of Gentry has an open secret they never speak of; every seven years they must sacrifice a child in return for the town’s prosperity.   Then Tate, a girl from school, comes to Mackie after the death of her baby sister.  She wants to talk to him because she believes the baby who died was not her sister, but a replacement – and her sister was the latest sacrifice.

 Mackie is a really sweet character that alot of people could relate to.  He is a stoic, sweet soul who tries to go unnoticed in a town where “others” like him are hated and feared.  It’s hard to fit in when he is so unusual – so allergic to iron that even the smell of blood sets off an attack, unable to walk on consecrated ground, eyes that are almost black.  When he meets one of his own kind and gets an introduction to the world he came from, he is repelled but curious.  Does he belong with them, or with the humans in Gentry?  The scenes involving the fairy courts under the slag heap are super creepy.

His family knew he was not their own flesh and blood, but raised and loved him anyway.  He and his sister Emma share a strong bond – so strong that when it becomes clear Mackie is dying (poisoned by the iron in the modern world), she goes to a fairy to find a cure.  

I couldn't put this book down, it's the same fanciful work that is Young Adult Fiction, but the story line is something we haven't seen before!!!