Nieve

Nieve is an independent young girl who loves to run and thinks she might be a journalist someday. Her only worries in life are homework and her best friend's measles.

That is, until the bizarre weeds, creepy people, and darkness begin to take over her town, turning everyone she knows into black-tongued zombies, or causing them to disappear altogether.

It falls to Nieve, at the direction of her grandmother, and with the help of her new flame-haired friend, Lias, to defeat the evil Impress and her dastardly plans to turn all the occupants of Nieve's town into furniture.

For me, this book felt like those frustrating dreams where you can never fully open your eyes. Mostly I was confused by it. People weren't introduced well enough to be memorable, so when their names popped up later in the book, I was constantly left feeling like, "Who was that again? Did I somehow manage to skip a bunch of pages while I was reading?" The heroine is mostly smart and fun to read, but towards the middle of the book, her denial of her own powers and of the strange things happening around her became a bit unbelievable and therefore frustrating---as in, There are large, noxious weeds with teeth all over your town, your substitute teacher tried to feed you an exploding eyeball, your parents are zombies, and the sun isn't rising anymore ... is it really so hard to believe that the amulets your grandma is giving you have protective powers, or that the new "pharmacy" owners might not quite be human? I really wanted to see her accept that she had abilities and start trying to use them. Perhaps that won't come until the second book (this is a planned trilogy). In any case, this novel for me was a little too psychedelic and confusing to be as enjoyable as I think it could've been. Interesting, but too strangely vague and frustrating.