A homecoming queen and a bad-boy loner team up to break a generational curse in this YA supernatural horror from a talented Egyptian American voice. Seventeen-year-old Mina Mansour has always longed to know where she comes from. Unfortunately, her immigrant father is so obsessed with fitting into the small California town they call home that he refuses to talk about anything related to Egypt--especially her mother's mysterious death.
Determined to learn about her roots, Mina secretly travels to the crumbling manor in the outskirts of Alexandria where her mother grew up. But when Mina returns, she doesn't come back alone.
A sinister demonic entity follows Mina home from Egypt, intent on seeing her dead and capable of turning everyone she knows violently against her. Isolated and fighting for her life, Mina must seek help from an unlikely ally: Jesse Talbot, resident bad boy of the senior class and the only person who proves immune to being possessed. Jesse would rather floss with barbed wire than team up with social butterfly Mina, but he doesn't exactly have a choice--after all, he's running from family secrets of his own.
When Mina and Jesse uncover a series of child disappearances linked to the women in her mother's family, they realize they must end her family's bloody debt if they hope to save their town from the eldritch entity who has laid claim to her soul.
Loosely drawn from Arab mythologies, this chilling tale of demonic possession and generational trauma explores themes of immigration and belonging, culminating in a shocking and unforgettable twist ending!
