Dead Girls Walking

Gr 9 Up–Ellis’s debut is a fast-paced slasher with a supernatural twist. Sixteen-year-old Temple Baker, daughter of an infamous serial killer, finds herself back on her dad’s old hunting grounds to try and find the truth about her mother’s disappearance. She poses as a counselor at a camp for Black, LGBTQIA+, horror-loving girls—a cast that provides a refreshing change of pace for the slasher genre—who all attend the school where she was recently suspended. The discovery of a dead staff member marks a turning point of the story from murder mystery to all-out supernatural killing spree, complete with detailed descriptions of mutilated corpses. Temple isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, even as she works through her bloody family baggage and learns to care for her fellow campers, especially transgender hacker and cheerleader Cali, and Yaya, a devoutly Christian lesbian. Unfortunately, the sky-high stakes are muddled by clumsy exposition and plot contrivances. A traumatized Temple lashes out indiscriminately at her fellow camper-peers, straining the credulity of her ever being put in a position of authority over them. The final remaining girls ricochet between locations and survival plans, undercutting the eventual climax, which could have been a resounding moment of friendship and self-love prevailing over familial abuse.