Melissa of the Bees

Seventeen-year-old Melissa Larkin is bound by a deadly curse to her small Appalachian mountain town — and to the mother who has promised to kill her when she turns eighteen. Escape is the only future she's ever allowed herself to imagine.

But when the bees in the great hive tree begin feeding her honey laced with the memories of the dead buried in the graveyard garden she tends, Melissa discovers a dangerous inheritance. Claiming it means staying in the place that has only ever hurt her and confronting the woman who sees her as a sacrifice, not a daughter. But surviving was never the point. As her birthday closes in and a blood ritual looms, Melissa finds she has already become something she never intended. Now she must decide whether to burn it down to get free — or stay and tend what she has made.

For readers drawn to the dark, voice-driven atmosphere of House of Hollow and the Southern Gothic magic of The River Has Teeth, with the intimate mother-daughter tension of T. Kingfisher's A Sorceress Comes to Call.