Shutter by Courtney Alameda is a fearless take on the modern monster mystery that may leave readers sleeping with the lights on.

Micheline Helsing has a lot on her plate.

She is a tetrachromat, able to perceive ghostly auras on the color spectrum. She is one of the last living descendants of Van Helsing, a birthright which restricts her from as many opportunities as it offers. She is in love with her best friend, a boy she will never be allowed to be with.

And, a few pages into Shutter by Courtney Alameda, Micheline is infected with a deadly, otherworldly curse called a soulchain.

Micheline and her squad of ghost-hunting hunks have one week to track down and exorcise the source of this mysterious blight. But their search unearths ghosts which the tattered Helsing family thought they’d buried long ago – and if Micheline can’t face her own demons, more than just the Helsings will pay the price.

‘Shutter’ book review

Most first person novels live and die on the strength of their protagonists, but Shutter by Courtney Alameda takes this concept to a gratifyingly literal level. Micheline Helsing fights off death on every page of this debut novel – fortunately, she is strong enough to make the fight very interesting indeed.

Competent and sensible while not immune to the drag of emotion (and the occasional terrible decision) Micheline would find a welcome place at Buffy Summers’ and Veronica Mars’s lunch table. A no-nonsense but relatable heroine, Micheline’s traumatic recent-past is handled especially well. Her history is a psychological weight she both drags behind her and which continually obstructs her path forward, and Alameda handles the subject admirably.

Micheline’s relationships also add a healthy – and sometimes uncomfortable – depth to Shutter by Courtney Alameda. Micheline’s fractured bond with her father resonates with painful honesty, and whether or not forbidden romance is your cup of tea, Micheline’s shared past with Aussie dreamboat Riley makes it easy to hope for a successful resolution.

But perhaps most importantly for a horror novel, Shutter is scary. Alameda’s ghouls are grisly, and their crimes are creatively gruesome. Alameda also knows exactly how to play her creepy-cards, and the story bubbles with a soft sense of dread which shudders to a boil at appropriate moments. Though Shutter clocks in at nearly 400 pages, the story is exceptionally well-paced, sweeping between the seemingly mundane valleys to terrifying peaks with a slickness rivaling its characters’.

The details of Alameda’s dense supernatural mythology (and those who fight its dark manifestations) can weigh down the story at times, as can the minutiae of Micheline’s ghost-hunting methods. But Alameda’s attention to detail is impressive, and also serves to ground Micheline’s story in its own reality – especially useful as Shutter lifts off into the realm of the truly gothic supernatural.

A swift, scary, and occasionally sweet addition to the budding genre of Young Adult horror, Shutter by Courtney Alameda will keep readers buzzing long after Micheline’s last flash.

Shutter by Courtney Alameda is available now from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and your local independent bookstore.