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Book: “Where No Shadow Stays” by Sara Hashem
Publishing Info: Holiday House, March 2026
Where Did I Get this Book: Netgalley!
Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound
Book Description: Seventeen-year-old Mina is always focused on what comes next: exams, school dances, opportunities for a picnic by the lake. Filling up the future keeps her from lingering over how little she knows about her history or where she comes from. Anytime she asks her father questions about Egypt–or about her mother’s mysterious death–he struggles to open up.
When Mina receives an invitation from an aunt she’s never met to visit the Haikal mansion, her mother’s childhood home in El Agamy, Mina accepts. She can’t resist the chance to learn more about her roots or what happened to her mother, even if it means lying to her loves ones for the first time in her life.
But when Mina returns from El Agamy, she doesn’t come back alone.
A sinister entity follows Mina from the Haikal mansion to her tiny California town. Mina is forced to abandon her friends, her father, and everything she loves in order to prevent the entity from violently possessing them. Isolated and fighting for her life, Mina must seek help from an unlikely ally: Jesse Talbot, the mortician’s hostile son and the only person who proves immune to possession. 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.
As Mina and Jesse dig deeper into Mina’s family lore, they uncover a bloody debt that must be satisfied if Mina wants to finish senior year alive.
Review: I have once again stolen a book from Kate’s genres, but Hashem wrote one of my favorite fantasy romance duologies of the last several years, so….yeah, I don’t care! I’m going to read whatever she writes at this point!
So, while I don’t typically read horror, this was the kind that I can get behind. Probably because it’s also YA, so the truly horrific stuff that Kate wades into is largely absent here. That said, Hashem does a great job of blending historical fiction and horror together in ways that are both intriguing and disturbing. The tension was perfectly wound tighter and tighter, only to release unexpectedly before starting it all up again.
I really liked the mystery at the heart of this story and learning more about Mina’s family and history. And on top of this central mystery behind what is making up this curse and how it can be defeated, Jesse also had mysteries of his own that were slowly revealed as the story continued.
Hashem also reconfirmed that she excels at writing compelling, swoon-worthy romances. I was a bit unsure how her talents would translate being removed from all of the fantasy trappings, but she definitely proved me wrong. Jesse and Mina’s relationship was so lovely, a slow-burning, tension-filled affair that drew me in right from the start.
I don’t want to go into spoilers with regards to the ending, but it was truly heart-wrenching. I guess I don’t know this for a fact, but I’ve always assumed that horror, as a genre, has a greater tendency to end in tragedy or, at best, an unclear future. And such is the case here. It all played out so well for the story that was being developed, but tissues were definitely needed.
Overall, I really enjoyed this one! Sara Hashem is just an excellent author, all things considered, and I’m happy to genre hop alongside her! If you’re a fan of YA horror stories, I definitely recommend this one!
Rating 8: Tension-filled in every way, both the romantic and the horrific!
Reader’s Advisory:
“Where No Shadow Stays” can be found on this Goodreads list: YA Novels of 2026.
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