'Your Blood, My Bones': Terrifying tale in the woods blends cottage-core horror with nostalgia

Many of us wish we could stamp out the ugly parts of our childhood. And no one understands that better than Wyatt Westlock, the protagonist of Kelly Andrew’s new young adult fantasy horror novel “Your Blood, My Bones.” The book became an instant New York Times bestseller this week.

When we meet Wyatt, she is moments away from burning down the home and farm she grew up in. But there’s an unpleasant surprise waiting for her in the basement — her former best friend Peter locked in chains and left for dead.

What Wyatt doesn’t know is that Peter isn’t just her childhood companion. He’s a semi-immortal her family cult has sacrificed over hundreds of years. Peter wants to end this cycle of torture. And he plans to do it by killing Wyatt and eliminating her family line.

But Wyatt and Peter are trapped on the farm together by a malevolent and ancient entity that has no intention of ever letting them leave. And there’s something terribly wrong with James, their other estranged childhood friend who says he’s there to help but only seems to stir up trouble.

If any of them wish to escape the farm with their lives, Wyatt, Peter and James must work together to put aside the past and replace the magical wards on the property. But the clock is ticking and something hungry is waiting in the woods.

Both unbearably creepy and expertly written, “Your Blood, My Bones” is a haunting book that will pick your bones clean and leave you with a deep and inescapable sense of yearning for home and what it used to be.

The core of this story is the relationship between Wyatt and Peter. Wyatt is forced to reckon with the fact that Peter, her childhood companion, is now her enemy. Peter must kill Wyatt — and end her line — if he wants to be free of ritual sacrifice. Their dynamic is heartbreakingly compelling. How did you think about writing it? 

“I think that when writing it, I wanted to make it very clear, even if it's not explicitly stated that Peter has these feelings for Wyatt and this protectiveness that have grown in him as a product of growing up with Wyatt and being close to her. And at the beginning of the story when we meet him, he is compartmentalizing that and focusing on his own survival and his survival requires him to kill her. But it's always kind of there in between the lines that even though he's doing what it takes to survive and putting himself first, he's never going to stop caring about her.”

“I think because Wyatt did have such fond memories of the farm and her childhood … I liked pitting it against Peter’s memories of the farm because he had an entirely different experience. And I love the idea that two people can walk side by side for years and come away with two completely different interpretations of that same walk. And I think that happens in real life as well.”

Wyatt and Peter spend most of their time during the novel trying to survive an evil entity in the forest. But we learn early on that, there’s evil on the farm too. Wyatt’s family is responsible for sacrificing Peter (who is semi-immortal) in hundreds of ritualistic deaths. His bones give power to the magic that keeps them safe from the monster in the woods. What were you hoping to explore with that plot element? 

“There's .. this through line of men in power doing whatever it takes to stay in power in spite of,  you know, maybe stepping on those around them to get there. They're ritualistically sacrificing this child in order to allegedly protect, protect the world, but there's some selfishness in it. And so I really wanted to sort of dig into the lengths people in power will go to keep that power.”

3) You’ve said before that your book is very loosely inspired by Peter Pan: Wyatt is Wendy, Peter is obviously Peter Pan (the boy who never grows up), and James is Captain Hook. Why make that childhood story the basis for a young adult horror fantasy? 

“I wanted to write a book that felt nostalgic for whoever picked it up … and I felt like Peter Pan as subject material was something most people at some time in their lives have seen the movie, have read the story, or have interacted with the lore. It just felt a good linchpin to really hang that nostalgia and melancholy on in a way that would make it a little more universal”

“I knew that I wanted to deal with the idea of growing up and leaving home, which, you know, Neverland contends with that a lot. Wendy's growing up and leaving the nursery, Peter Pan doesn't grow up and the Lost Boys are stuck in this sort of cycle. And I liked the idea of leaving the metaphorical nursery, like Wyatt's coming back and sort of contending with the idea that maybe the way she perceived things when she was small were not correct … And I just really loved how that played kind of nicely into the unsettling horror aspect of the story.”

Your book is the latest in a number of fantasy horror novels that are set within and near forests. Why do you think we’re seeing so many books that weave together horror and the woods? 

“I do think that there's a lot going on in the world right now. And I think that there's a lot of climate emergency, climate change. And I think that horror tends to reflect what's going on in the world. And I think that we're seeing a lot of more natural leaning horror because we are living in a lot of natural leaning horror …We have a lot of plague books or zombie books and we're dealing with pandemic or mass, mass casualty events we have, you know, I think that you see kind of horror as a mirror up to what is happening societally.”

5) There’s angst and suffering galore in ‘Your Blood, My Bones’ but I’m wondering do you ultimately see this as a love story between Wyatt, Peter, and James? 

“I see it as a self love story. I think that all three of the characters love each other deeply and I think that it's an unconditional sort of love that they feel for one another as they've gone through so much together … But I do think that internally all of them are on their own journeys to discover what is best for them and what it takes them to heal and to find acceptance. And I think they all find it at the end no matter how that looks like.”