Day’s YA: LITTLE NECROMANCERS

LITTLE NECROMANCERS by Emma Devlin
9781250450012
3/23/2027
Wednesday Books
Ages 13-18

In Emma Devlin’s LITTLE NECROMANCERS, death is no longer a life sentence. But for Mercy Hawkins, Boston’s worst psychic, the debt she’s in from paying for her parents’ resurrection might as well be one. Her death predictions never come true, and she’s struggling to put food on the table, let alone make the exorbitant payments that the Granville family demands for bringing her parents back to life. So when the Granvilles come to her, promising to forget her debt for a small favor, Mercy can’t afford to ignore them. Necromancers like the Granvilles have the ability to reverse death… but only if someone’s ghost wants to come back, and their youngest son Julian is refusing to do so. As a banshee, Mercy can see him and talk to him, and as his childhood best friend, she has the best chance to play ghost therapist and convince him to come back to life. Except there’s one glaring problem: Mercy knows that Julian’s death was no accident, and the killer is still on the Granville estate.

Emma Devlin’s debut twists and turns à la Knives Out, made even more elaborate with an intricate magic system guiding the rules of life, death, and afterlife (and surprisingly, property law). The ghosts of the Granville estate are bound by fae-like rules, occupying a role similar to house brownies (and sometimes that of a boggart), and Mercy has no reason to trust them any more than her living employers—and yet, the tricksy ghosts who would have every reason to kill Julian help her investigate, while the Granvilles impede her detective work at every step.

LITTLE NECROMANCERS builds an almost oppressive atmosphere of pressure; Mercy spends her nights haunted by dreams of drowning in water and her waking days drowning in debt and guilt. Sometimes it feels like the house itself is trying to get rid of her. With each reveal, the tension is released just enough to give the reader a chance to breathe—but with each new clue, it ramps right back up again, moving fast and leaving the reader delightfully off-balance. Every character has their fair share of skeletons in the closet, allowing the real killer to remain hidden until the very end. Half manor house mystery, half urban fantasy (and the barest bones of a budding romance, hopefully to be explored in the next book in the series!), LITTLE NECROMANCERS is about grief, guilt, and the lengths people will go to for their family—living or dead.

Happy reading!
<3 Emma

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