Chime by Franny Billingsley

Teenager Briony Larkin feels responsible for her twin sister Rose's mental incapacity, and for her stepmother's untimely death. That's a heavy load for a young girl to carry, and Briony copes with her feelings of profound guilt by periodically beating up on herself, both figuratively and literally, including cutting herself and offering her blood to the spirit world. This sounds like a completely contemporary problem, but author Franny Billingsley has cleverly set the story in quite another time and place--in an English country town called Swampsea at the beginning of the twentieth century. Sometimes it seems more like the twelfth or thirteenth century, with talk of witch hangings and resident ghosts called the Old Ones.

Billingsley's writing style could be called either highly evocative or overwrought, depending on one's taste. But the story unfolds with just enough suspense and romance to keep even the most skeptical readers enthralled. The entrance into the tale of beautiful, leonine Eldric, son of the man who plans to engineer the drainage of Swampsea's swamp, adds more than a frisson of romance. It also adds another level to the plot, making us think that perhaps Briony's memories of her loving stepmother need a bit of revising. This, it turns out, is a tale of visions and revisions. And learning to avoid making the Boggy Mun unhappy is not the only lesson Chime has to teach.