Shadow of Bruja – The Lords of the Night

J. C. Cervantes's Shadow of Bruja is a Maya myth adventure for 10 year olds about a girl who can bend shadows to her will.

What happens

Ren is fourteen, lives with her abuelo and runs an alien-spotting blog. She's also a shadow witch whose mum is a Maya goddess, and she has already helped save the gods once. The book fills you in on all of that as it goes.

It opens with a proper spooky flashback. Ren is thirteen, reading in bed, when the last words of her book start to glow. Then she hears her dead father's viola playing her song in the kitchen. Something with black wings scrapes across the roof. By the end of the night she's alone in a little boat heading out to sea!

Back in the present, Ren is trying to be normal again. It isn't going well. Her blog inbox is full of trolls calling her a loser and a fake. Her friend Marco (son of the Maya god of war) now cares more about football than monsters.

Then a twelve-year-old in Kansas emails about a strange symbol burned into his cornfield. Ren bribes Marco along by promising to write his school essays, and they step through a magic gateway.

What follows is fast and very creepy in places. Ren gets pulled into a dark "shadow prison" where a voice calls her queen. Rat-like monsters burst out of the earth. And then, of course, the pair end up at an all-night Las Vegas buffet.

Ren is lovely to spend time with. She's anxious, kind and stubborn, with a head full of alien theories. She also has absence seizures when she's stressed, which is written into the story very naturally. The bickering between her and Marco is great fun.

Ren is fourteen and Marco is in eighth grade, so it's worth knowing what comes with that. There are monsters, a dad who died years before the story starts, online bullying and the odd "hell".

For a reader who loves myths and a bit of spookiness, it could be a brilliant find. For one who scares easily, it might be one to keep for later.

What to read next

If they love the idea of a girl discovering family magic, try The Last Fallen Star next. Riley Oh has no magic in a family of Korean-American healing witches, and her sister's big initiation is two days away.