“ Katzenjammer is a postmodern nightmare, a David Lynchian spiral of terror. Zappia has created a visceral examination of trauma and violence.” BookPage (starred review) also function to help Cat recover memories that shed some light on their current hellish existence.

As Cat slinks around the hallways trying to find the murderer, readers experience her frequent flashbacks. The Changed and the Unchanged operate as separate factions with defined turf, but someone has begun gruesomely murdering students. Readers are deposited unceremoniously into a high school, where students are trapped and many are grotesquely transformed. Please take care of yourself while reading this book. Fans of Marieke Nijkamp’s This Is Where It Ends and Karen McManus’s One of Us Is Lying will lose themselves in the pages of this novel-or maybe in the treacherous hallways of the school.Ĭontent Warnings: School bullying and violence, mention of eating disorders, and scenes of gore, blood, and death. Much like the acclaimed Eliza and Her Monsters, Katzenjammer features black-and-white illustrations by the author throughout the novel. Told in chapters alternating between the past and the present, Francesca Zappia weaves a spine-tingling, suspenseful, and haunting story about tragedy and the power of memories. And to do that, she’ll have to remember what put her there in the first place. But to save herself from the eventual self-destruction all the students face, Cat must find the way out. Escaping has always been the one impossibility in her school’s upside-down world. Cat’s best friend is slowly turning into cardboard, and instead of a face, Cat has a cat mask made of her own hardened flesh.Ĭat doesn’t remember why she is trapped in her school or why half of them-Cat included-are slowly transforming. The hallways contract and expand along with the school’s breathing, and the showers in the bathroom run a bloody red. She never leaves, and for a long time her school has provided her with everything she needs.

Zappia francesca