Morbid Curiosities

A scholarship student uncovers a conspiracy while working at an elite microbiology research laboratory in this uneven yet intriguing YA debut by Hati (And the Sky Bled). Seventeen-year-old Aarya—who describes herself as “the saddest teenager, obsessed with microbes and genetics instead of... ‘fun’ ”—is thrilled to join the Elizabethan Institute’s yearlong intensive program, which offers six high schoolers a shot at receiving a life-changing grand prize: industry connections and a job doing cutting-edge research. But rumors of mutated animals appearing both on and off the San Francisco campus suggest to Aarya that the institute’s lab experiments have taken a sinister turn. Her suspicions are soon confirmed when she begins receiving threatening letters, discovers a tree house filled with creepy messages hidden in children’s drawings, and encounters a mysterious girl with an ultrarare autoimmune disease, who claims to be the lab’s unwitting test subject. As Aarya reluctantly recruits her research partners’ help in unraveling their employers’ secrets, she’s plagued by unsettling memory gaps and flare-ups of personal health issues that could link her own murky past to the institute. Though an abrupt conclusion leaves many questions unanswered, smart twists propel this slow-building and provocative mystery. Characters are intersectionally diverse. Ages 14–up. Agent: Allegra Martschenko, BookEnds Literary. (Apr.)