If you’re anything like us here at BookScouter HQ, at close to the half-way point this October (AKA 🎃Halloween Month), we’re always on the lookout for our next spooky-season must-read. BTW, check out the best Halloween books for adults list we prepared earlier.
Crave Book Series, a YA fiction series by Tracy Wolff, blends elements of classic high-school drama, mortal peril, and a supernatural-flavoured sexiness. So grab your PSL, chai tea or poison of choice and check out our top 5 reasons to pick up Crave this autumn!
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The Premise
Crave starts strong: set in a prestigious academy that’s part Hogwarts, a little Charles Xavier’s School for the Gifted. The school turns out to be an imposing castle improbably hidden in a snowy Alaskan wilderness. The story follows 17-year old Grace Foster, an unwilling transplant from sunny San Diego to her uncle’s remote school. She arrives as an unhappy self-described ‘mortal among gods’, namely vampires, witches, and werewolves.
As a mere token human and designated ‘New Girl’, Grace draws rather more attention than she expects, much of it unwelcome. She does however, as the series progresses, get to discover her own gifts and alternate identities. Though Grace is very much human, her development shares common threads with the likes of Percy Jackson, Katniss Everdeen and Harry Potter, pleasingly more than those she shares with the likes of Bella Swann.
The Cast
One of the key strengths of the Crave series is its diverse and memorable cast of characters: from the plucky Grace, reeling from family tragedy and homesickness, her stylish, soft-hearted cousin Maisie, to the charming, ever-helpful Flint and one Jaxon Vega.
Jaxon, over a hundred years old and afflicted by profound existential ennui, isn’t merely bored. He’s, as expected, die-cast devastating: a ‘sexy AF…Mr. Tall, Dark and Surly’ specimen, as well as plain tear-your-throat-out dangerous. He also hides and appealing vulnerability beneath the undead arrogance. Grace, despite her better judgement of course, finds she just can’t stay away.
The Romance
It’s hardly a spoiler to say that Grace and Jaxon’s hate-cute, one that takes place over an amazing chess board within the first few chapters of book one, sets the stage for a tempestuous romance. Wolff builds her core relationships with a keen eye for classic forbidden love stories with a touch of the Gothic and an awareness of her audience. This finds expression in an obligatory, slow-burn sexual tension before anything like tenderness or love develops.
The Crave Universe
The academy in Crave is brought to vivid life, from its sprawling campus, its staff and pupils to its many secrets, arcane traditions and rivalries. Readers will find themselves easily transported to a place where magic and risk lurk around every corner. Wolff’s descriptive head-hopping chapters, each narrated from Grace and Jaxon’s alternating viewpoints allow readers to visualise the academy, its inhabitants, and its mysteries, in cinematic detail.
All this set in gently satirical contrast to the rather more mundane, sometimes more intense high-school pecking order of freaks, geeks and cool kids.
Crave Book Series: More Reasons to Read?
Tracy Wolff’s writing style is engaging and accessible, making each volume of the Crave series a brisk page-turner. Her prose combines the lyrical sense of place with a healthy respect the school’s buildings and grounds (as well as a clearly well-honed appreciation for an elegant wall treatment or a fabulous fireplace) with snappy dialogue and thrilling action sequences.
Wolff’s deft balance of romance, suspense, and scares gets a little spice from welcome moments of meta-textual humour. Grace is wry, more than a little angry and self-aware enough to realise her life and experiences might often slot into at least one other popular YA franchise.
This lightness of touch ensures even Crave’s most familiar elements and tropes still hold some appeal. Though some of its pop-culture references might well date in time (will we still scream for Harry Styles in a few years or decades?), Crave still works as perfect escapism for days or nights, cold, dark or otherwise.
