Book Review: Lucretia and the Kroons by Victor LaValle

eBook
Release date: July 23, 2012
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau (Random House)
Author: Victor LaValle

Lucretia's best friend and upstairs neighbor Sunny-a sweet pitbull of a kid, even as she struggles with a mysterious illness-has gone missing. The only way to get her back is for Lucretia to climb the rickety fire escape of their Queens tenement and crawl through the window of apartment 6D, portal to a vast shadowland of missing kids ruled by a nightmarish family of mutants whose designs on the children are unknown. Her search for Sunny takes Lucretia through a dark fantasyland where she finds lush forests growing from concrete, pigeon-winged rodents, and haunted playgrounds. Her quest ultimately forces her to confront the most frightening specter of all: losing, forever, the thing you love the most. Lucretia and the Kroons is a dazzlingly imaginative adventure story and a moving exploration of the power of friendship and the terror of loss. This all-new novella serves as the perfect companion piece to The Devil in Silver, a thrillingly suspenseful work of literary horror that continues the story of Lucretia.

This was a weird book. Not at all what I expected, and that's not a bad thing. It was creepy and a bit disturbing and it made me think. It was sneaky that way, with the thinking.

These are always the toughest reviews for me to write. The ones where I didn't love the book, but I didn't hate it either.
This book is really just kind of ho-hum for me.

It's a novella, so it's an easy day-read. The characters are interesting, and I did really like Loochie.

It's the horror bits that were just okay for me. I prefer my horror to be realistic, and Lucretia and the Kroons is more a fantasy-horror.

That being said, it did interest me enough to want to read it's companion novel, The Devil in Silver, but only because it continues the story of Loochie...without the odd Kroons.

If you're looking for a short read and you like off-the-wall kind of stuff, you might like Lucretia and the Kroons.
I'd say it's for ages 16+. Some of the horror bits might gross out younger teens.