Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2004 (Vol. 72, No. 13))
Love defeats evil in mediocre gross-out horror. The sleepy little New England island town of Raven's Point has a dark history. While Jane's brother Elijah wakes up from his year-long coma, the town's old grudges and petty nastiness escalate disturbingly. Only Jane, Elijah's ex-girlfriend Tavia, and shy basketball-star Seth seem unaffected. The town is rocked with arguing, which becomes violence, followed by increasing insanity, gang rape, and attempted murder. Explicit scenes of animal abuse and self-mutilation punctuate this gore-fest. Jane, Tavia, and Seth develop powers that show them about a vile evil that last rose on Raven's Point in 1702. With the powers of love, self-sacrifice, and ridiculous special effects, the teens will defeat the ancient evil and get dates. Not scary; just disgusting. 2004, HarperCollins, 256p, $15.99. Category: Fiction. Ages 13 up. © 2004 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Michele Winship (KLIATT Review, January 2005 (Vol. 39, No. 1))
Something evil lurks under the surface on the lovely island of Raven’s Point, and unless it is put to rest, it will destroy everything and everyone in its path. Jane Romano’s life turned upside down after a car accident two years ago that left her older brother Elijah in a coma. When Tavia Burrows realized that Elijah, her first love, wouldn’t be coming back, she tried to move on with her life and make plans for the future. Seth McFadden, the new guy in town, has his eye on Jane, but keeps a painful secret. Everything comes to a head when Elijah suddenly wakes up and strange things begin to happen. Jane suddenly starts flipping in time, watching events from the past as though they are happening now. Tavia finds that she can communicate with animals, but has no idea what it all means. And Seth’s past comes back to haunt him, literally. In the meantime, Raven’s Point has turned upside down, with irrational violence spinning out of control. Jane, Tavia, and Seth have to research the past together to find out what their future will be. Like Stephen King, Metz creates a place where “normal” gives way to horror as evil bubbles up to feed on unwitting victims. Time is of the essence as the teens struggle to unearth both the origin of this evil and the one thing that will stop it. Category: Hardcover Fiction. KLIATT Codes: JS--Recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2004, HarperCollins, 244p., $16.89. Ages 12 to 18.

Karen Coats (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, October 2004 (Vol. 58, No. 2))
Everyone is so elated when Elijah emerges from his year-and-a-half-long coma that they can't bring themselves to admit the odd changes they note in his personality. Besides, other strange occurrences are absorbing his friends' attention: Seth is seeing ghosts, Tavia has acquired power over both domestic and wild animals, and Jane is having peculiarly real flashbacks. Around their island of Raven's Point, even more sinister and gruesome things are happening--a mother is testing surgical implements on her own flesh in order to find the perfect weapon to kill her daughter, a father is taking bizarre steps to keep "sax and violins" from infecting his family, and a boy treats half of his father's beer with drain cleaner in a deadly game of Russian Roulette. It turns out that Elijah has become a living host for an ancient, disembodied evil that feeds on and accelerates people's deepest and most repressed hatreds and fears, and it's up to Seth, Tavia, and Jane to use their newly acquired "gifts" to stop it taking over the town. Both the romance and the gore in this fast-paced thriller are tinged with suspense; readers will be as interested in who hooks up as in who kills whom and how. The particular angers and resentments that fester out-of-control are eerily credible in their motivations, and the climax is cinematically weird enough to satisfy seasoned phantasmagoria fans. There's even a plug for doing research in the local library's special collections room, as Tavia, Seth, and Jane try to figure out how the island's past is linked to their present. Read this in broad daylight, and expect a few prickles and "eeeuuws" even then. Review Code: R -- Recommended. (c) Copyright 2004, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 2004, HarperCollins, 244p, $16.89 and $15.99. Grades 7-12.

Shawn Kerbein (The Kutztown University Book Review, Spring 2005)
Something evil has awoken on Raven’s Point, a tiny island off the coast of Rhode Island, and it is trying to kill off everyone on the island in the most gruesome manner possible. It is up to a small group of teenagers with psychic powers to combat the evil and save everyone. I didn’t like this book at all. I thought it was poorly written (better than R.L. Stine though), that there was a distinct lack of any kind of character development, and that the violence and horror elements were largely gratuitous and unnecessary. That being said, this probably wouldn’t stay on the shelf in a middle school library. Category: Horror. 2004, Harper Collins, $15.99. Ages 12 to 15.

Julie Scordato (VOYA, December 2004 (Vol. 27, No. 5))
This original horror story meshes supernatural elements such as ghosts, reincarnation, and time travel into a cohesive and suspenseful narrative. Strange things are happening in the sleepy island town of Raven's Point. Jane is thrilled that her older brother Elijah has recovered from his coma but notices that he does not seem himself. Many of the town's citizens' behavior progresses from strange to excessively violent. Jane discovers that Elijah's former girlfriend, Octavia, and popular basketball player, Seth, have also noticed the growing insanity and weird new talents that they seem to have. Octavia can call on the animals, Jane can travel back to 1702 and observe the supernatural of the colonial village, and Seth is haunted by silent ghosts trying to communicate something important. Working together, the teens realize that Elijah is the final member of their team and that they are reincarnations of four teens from 1702 who battled the evil but failed to destroy it forever. Elijah is saved from the evil possessing him, and the four work together in the final battle at the base of supernatural tree that has begun to openly feed on the townspeople. There is a lot going on in this novel, and Metz handles the changing points of view with skill. The main characters are likeable and fairly well drawn. The ending does not seem to fit and is a bit clichéd and pat, but on the whole, this horror novel is a solid story. It might be particularly popular with the teens who like Invasion of the Body-Snatchers-type stories. VOYA CODES: 3Q 3P J S (Readable without serious defects; Will appeal with pushing; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2004, HarperCollins, 256p., $15.99 and PLB $16.89. Ages 12 to 18.