Happy Yule and Saturnalia! It's a Winter Wonderland at Go Your Own YA, where everything festively terrible happens to Gemma Doyle in Rebel Angels by Libba Bray. Carols, presents, wraiths and horrible fates in the classic about monstrous teen girls. We talk about Buffy the Vampire Slayer as the heroine's journey and folk horror Christmas traditions as we gear for a festive month of reads.

Rebel Angels: Goodreads

Beauty Queens: Goodreads

Libba Bray: Website

Content Warnings

Drug addiction in a family member, general Victorian racism,classism, and sexism, parental incest, blood and gore, suicide, and a whole lot of plot set in an asylum

Show Notes

Paradise Lost by John Milton at Project Gutenberg

Cassandra Clare scoops £1m for first adult novels

A Victorian [England] Christmas

Saturnalia: The December Festival of Joy and Merriment in Ancient Rome

The Winter Solstice - Yule Lore

Folk Horror Revival

Jólakötturinn, The Christmas Cat of Iceland

8 Legendary Monsters of Christmas

15 Fascinating Facts About The Wicker Man

Picnic at Hanging Rock

One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with Libba Bray

Monstrous Bodies: Feminine Power in Young Adult Horror Fiction

Who are the Baby Bees? Listen to Baby-Sitters Club Club to find out

Actually it was Lizzie Skurnick that talked about friends of proximity in Are You There God? It's Me Margaret

Internet Anagram Server

From Bethlehem to Bedlam - England's First Mental Institution

Here's a playlist of the BBC's videos on Victorian Christmas How Tos!

Libba Bray blogs on depression

The Finishing School series by Gail Carriger

A Gemma sighting in Lair of Dreams! Thank you to allthesmallwords.tumblr.com for the photo

Readalikes

The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi

Blood Rose Rebellion by Rosalyn Eves

Current Reads

Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World edited by Kelly Jensen

Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. (CC Marie Macula, Carey Farrell 2017)