White Smoke by Tiffany Jackson

Genre: Horror Targeted Age Group: 14 - 18 Summary: Marigold moves with her newly blended family from California to the Midwestern city of Cedarville when her mom accepts a position with The Sterling Foundation which also includes a FREE house. All is not what it seems in their newly renovated home on Maple Street as Marigold wonders begins to hear creaks, notice doors opening on their own and items vanishing. Is the house haunted or is her mind playing tricks on her? Why I chose this book: This book is a recent release (Fall 2021) and was chosen because of its author Tiffany Jackson. Tiffany Jackson is a New York Times bestselling and award winning author of several young adult books which include Monday's Not Coming, Allegedly and Grown. She has been met with praise from peers and readers alike as she is known to pull out surprising twists. With all of this talk about her previous works I felt that I had to read her most recent release as she makes her debut into the horror genre.

Review:

I usually don't dive into horror but this spooky season I decided to give it a try with White Smoke. The mood throughout White Smoke is one of fear and anxiety. From the perspective of Marigold we follow her and her family as they make the big move from California to the Midwestern city of Cedarville. The reader is in almost a constant state of anxiety in Marigold's mind due to her obsession with bed bugs stemming from an incident of her childhood. (To be honest, I now find myself wondering about bed bugs from time to time.) The constant anxiety makes us wonder if we can trust Marigold when she begins to observe strange happenings around the house such as the creaking, doors opening and closing on their own and household items going missing. Is it really happening or is Marigold so fraught with anxiety that she's hallucinating. We come to find that she is in fact observing these happenings around her home and wonder if something sinister lays afoot? Could the house be haunted?

Jackson makes wonderful use of her setting: the dying Midwestern city of Cedarville. The lack of life within the city and in the neighborhood that Marigold and her family reside adds to the eerieness of the story. Marigold finds it strange that they are moving into a newly renovated home for free while they are surrounded by dilapidated houses. There has to be a catch that they are not aware of. We begin to learn more of the current state of the story's setting through the supporting character of Yusef who details the history of the city filled with violence, racism, gentrification and a corrupt justice system.

While Marigold was seen as selfish and self-absorbed, the character who got under my skin was her little stepsister Piper. While we learn that Piper has had it rough (coming home to a dead grandmother), I find that it does excuse her behavior and acting. Through Marigold's eyes we see a bit of strife created between Marigold's mom and new husband Alec. I, like Marigold, do not find myself warming up to the character of Piper until towards the end of the story.

I greatly suggest White Smoke for your next horror read. Tiffany Jackson really knows how to pull off a twist as I would not have guessed the ending. She definitely threw me for a loop with the ending. My only qualm is that the ending felt abrupt and open-ended and I would have loved to have had more resolution.

Jackson, T. D. (2021). White Smoke. Katherine Tegen books.