{"id":5683,"date":"2023-10-31T11:23:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T11:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/?p=5683"},"modified":"2024-08-02T13:31:12","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T13:31:12","slug":"lora-senf-the-clackity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/31\/lora-senf-the-clackity\/","title":{"rendered":"Lora Senf: The Clackity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Blight Harbor is the \u201cseventh most haunted town in America (per capita)\u201d and is a place where the paranormal is just normal. You\u2019re as likely to know the name of the neighbouring ghost as you are the local librarian. And if something untoward hasn\u2019t happened to you, you\u2019re guaranteed it\u2019s happened to someone you know. For an intriguing place, it\u2019s a shame then that we see Blight Harbor only briefly in Lora Senf\u2019s The Clackity<\/em> (2022), the town\u2019s appearances bookending a story about a young girl\u2019s quest to save her clairvoyant aunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first in a series focused in and around the town, its narrator is Evelyn (Evie) Von Rathe and she\u2019s everything you could want in such fiction, a sassy kid with a flaw to overcome. Evie suffers from anxiety about her parents\u2019 deaths (\u201cMy parents disappeared, and nobody could prove to me they died.\u201d). One day, defying one of her aunt\u2019s few rules, Evie follows her to the abandoned abattoir on the edge of town and, too late, encounters the Clackity, a dark and ancient creature that dwells in the slaughterhouse\u2019s shadows. With its stitched-up eye, its rows of teeth, and its curious manner of speech, it\u2019s a pleasingly creepy monster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With her aunt in peril, Evie bargains with the Clackity, which results in the quest that forms the bulk of the story. In another world there\u2019s a neighbourhood of seven variously imagined houses and Evie must work her way through them, solving their puzzles and finding the keys to unlock the next. It\u2019s a fairly simple premise and to keep up the pressure Senf introduces a second villain, the ghost of a century-old serial killer, who never feels far away in his pursuit. Although the Clackity makes appearances in other guises, attempting to distract the girl from her mission, it ultimately feels somewhat underused, especially given it\u2019s the subject of the title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Evie\u2019s quest is a lonely one, she does have one companion (a living bird tattoo that moves around within her skin!) who isn\u2019t all that interactive, leaving her to solve problems on her own. Though the author is usually there to give a helping hand as there\u2019s certainly a making-it-up-as-she-goes-along vibe, an accusation that could be overcome with cunning foreshadowing. That said, there\u2019s a certain trippiness to its flights of fancy that flow even if they would only be sensible in the logic of a dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as a reader with many more years around the sun than the target age (10-12 years) the moments I found frustratingly whimsical and contrived are probably, to younger minds, food for the imagination. I did wonder if I\u2019d lost that magic of childhood as I roll my eyes where others may widen theirs in awe, but it\u2019s just that, as an adult, I find my magic elsewhere. I bought this for a young relative who will doubt be swept along, but couldn\u2019t resist a sneaky read in advance. Happy Halloween.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blight Harbor is the \u201cseventh most haunted town in America (per capita)\u201d and is a place where the paranormal is just normal. You\u2019re as likely to know the name of the neighbouring ghost as you are the local librarian. And if something untoward hasn\u2019t happened to you, you\u2019re guaranteed it\u2019s happened to someone you know. Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[301],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senf-lora"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/811YA8lSM2L._AC_UF8941000_QL80_-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pon-1tF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5683"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5758,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5683\/revisions\/5758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booklit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}