From Dust, A Flame, by Rebecca Podos, is new YA fiction with well-developed characters and fantasy elements from Jewish folklore. My favorite feeling in a fantasy novel is the blend of realistic life with the wild and magical, and this story does it so well.

At the beginning of the book, teenage Hannah is a bit high-strung, working hard for perfect grades and a Normal High School Experience after moving every couple years through her whole childhood.

Hannah’s whole life is upended when she wakes up on her seventeenth birthday with strange lizard eyes. The next day, and each day after, she wakes up with a new mutation: scales, horns, wings, a tail… No matter what she does, every night she falls asleep eventually, and every morning she wakes up with a new, strange mutation somewhere.  I couldn’t help seeing the puberty metaphor, as every day, Hannah struggles to hide the latest mutation under baggy clothes.  There’s no gore in any of these mutations, although some of Hannah’s forms are a bit creepy and none of them seem particularly pleasant.

I think for many of us, the teen years are a time to reevaluate what we’ve been told about our families. Sometimes there’s more context given, sometimes family secrets are spilled, but sometimes it’s just growing maturity and understanding. Hannah and her brother Gabe face all of these as they discover their mother’s past and the family they never knew about.  (Oddly, I happened to read this right after Gone Tonight, a dark suspense story that also begins with a single mom spinning lies about they don’t have any relatives.) There are relatives they’ve never heard about, and a whole history of Jewish mysticism and healing that’s never been mentioned. It’s supernatural and often scary, but it’s also a coming-of-age story.

In From Dust, A Flame, I loved the blend of familiar Jewish legends, like the golem of Prague, with others that were completely new to me. There’s a new take on the golem legends, too. (I don’t want to spoil it, but I spent a lot of the story waiting for the golem to turn dangerous and uncontrollable like in the legends, and I really liked the way this unfolded instead.) These mythological creatures and curses come out along with more common family secrets, like a falling out between old friends, to create a feeling of danger and discovery in the whole novel. It’s this discovery — of the supernatural and of their extended family == that really propelled the story for me. I wanted our Hannah to be freed from her awful curse, of course, but I was also just so curious to see how other things would unfold. 

Hannah is also discovering her sexuality in this story. She’s had an underwhelming boyfriend before the novel begins, but assumed that was just a bad fit. (This is terribly relatable. We’ve all had underwhelming dates and fireworks-free kisses, haven’t we?) As she gets to know Ari Leydon, the granddaughter of an important family friend, Hannah discovers she might not be straight at all. I liked that the story didn’t give Hannah a sexuality label or have a big coming-out. This part is a sweet high-school romance — with monsters, that is.

If you like queer stories with supernatural Jewish hauntings, also check out The City Beautiful. Ok, my recommendations might be getting a little too specific now.