Kin (book 1 of The Good Neighbors) by Holly Black and Ted Naifeh

Rue Silver is worried. He mother has been gone for three weeks, her dad hasn’t been to work since, and she’s seeing things. She thinks. Then one of her dad’s college students turns up dead and suddenly the police suspect a link between the student’s death, Rue’s mother’s disappearance, and Rue’s father. For a reason that I’ve already forgotten, but it worked at the time, Rue starts researching faeries and realizes that some faerie lore fits in with the weirdness going on in her life. She pieces together that her mother was a faerie and she, in turn, has some faerie blood, which is what allows her to see the creatures she’s seeing everywhere – but that no one else can see. An evil grandfather (who looks as young as her) shows up with an ultimatum and Rue has to make some choices about how much she wants to embrace her faerie side, all the while trying to figure out what really happened to the dead student.

The Good Neighbors was packed with details – things in the background of one panel become important thirty pages later; things mentioned in passing turn out to be very subtle foreshadowing. When I started flipping back through, I was impressed at how early things were introduced, but there were times when I felt a little lost. Mostly, though, I really enjoyed it and look forward to the next volume.

Reviewed from ARC (thanks, ALA!), release date: Oct. 1, 2008