We have boarded-up appliance stores and nail salons, the Atlantis Wash and Lube, and a mortuary on almost every block. Sarah Porter’s Brooklyn isn’t an unfamiliar place.

All that relationship stuff needs to wait until she sorts out the situation she finds herself in thanks to her trip to BY’s, though. Vassa spends a little bit of Vassa in the Night considering a relationship with someone who’s totally wrong for her, in more ways than one, and even less of a bit pondering the person who’s a much more feasible option. But as the book goes on, and Vassa’s forced to woman up, she becomes less of a stereotypical teenager and more like a person it would be fun to be around. It would be hard to be her friend, even if you tried really hard. She doesn’t make it easy to like her, however, and her reluctance to tell anyone about Erg (the aforementioned magical wooden doll) makes people think she’s a hoarder, a thief, and a little bit crazy. I mean, life has certainly dealt her a few crappy hands, but she’s better off than a whole lot of people.

Because a trip to BY’s-a store that dances around on chicken legs with an owner who literally chops the heads off shoplifters-means taking your life into your hands. When one of her sisters goads Vassa into a post-midnight run to the neighborhood convenience store, Vassa is aware that her somewhat hard life might be about to get harder. Plus: Night seems to be growing longer and longer (for reasons unknown, but assumedly supernatural). Her mother died when she was young her father remarried and then up and left Vassa with her stepmother and two sort-of sisters, one of whom hates her she’s in charge of watching a magical wooden doll with an insatiable appetite and kleptomaniacal tendencies. It also fits so well with the story inside. The colors, the starry night, the iconic bridge and skyline, the typeface. There’s so much to love about this cover.

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Vassa in the night