Of the three Merry Sisters of Fate, Brenna Yovanoff is the most enigmatic. Her books are all standalones, with odd twists on typical urban fantasy stuff -- ghosts, fairies and angels. 
 And "Fiendish" continues this tradition with her dark, ropy, hauntingly bloody take on Southern gothic, in a town divided by "craft" and the terrible secrets that lurk in the woods -- "fiends" and strange warped magic that threatens everyone. The biggest problem is that very little is explained, and the first third of the book feels like it had some vital chapters chopped out of the beginning, leaving it quite confusing. 
 For the past decade, Clementine Devore has been trapped in a cellar, with her eyes sewn shut, a trickbag at her throat, and roots growing over her body. She doesn't remember how she got there or who did this to her. Then Fisher and his gang find her, and bring her back to her skeletal Aunt Myloria... who doesn't remember that she exists. Fortunately her cousin Shiny still does, and she begins reintroducing Clementine to the world she left behind. 
 But that world isn't quite what it was. Her mother is dead. Her house is a ruin filled with caged animals. And something terrible happened years ago, which turned the townfolk into a ravening mob against the folk-magic "craft" families. 
 As Clementine tries to get used to this new town, she begins to realize that the source of the trouble may be the Hollow, a wild place of twisted magic where fiends and monstrous creatures roam. And she feels a connection to bad-boy Fisher that may be more than romance -- they're both part of a wild, uncontrollable magic that could destroy everything in the town. The reckoning is coming, and they may not be able to stop it. 
 The biggest problem with "Fiendish" is that it seems to start a few chapters too late. It's one of those books that simply lobs its characters and magical system at the reader without explanation or introduction -- the characters just start talking about "craft" or people we haven't seen yet, and the reader is left to frantically try to catch up. While Yovanoff weaves the explanations into the story, and eventually reveals everything by the end, it's very confusing and distracting as you try to figure out exactly what "craft" is and what it consists of. 
 And that distraction is even worse because it pulls you away from Yovanoff's haunting, sublimely-pretty writing ("Her smile was a fixed, blazing thing that burned through her eyes and shone in her skin like starlight"). She creates a very Appalachian kind of community, with rickety wooden houses and wild woods where teens can roam freely -- it's quite different from the shiny, sleek Southern-belle approach that most authors have when they depict the deep South. 
 And the magic in it is equally unique -- a gnarled, knotted, thorny kind of hoodoo magic, where blazing pale fiends wander through the twisted darkness of the Hollow. Things have to be buried in the earth to neutralize their magic, and stuff going wrong results in very strange occurrences (stone tomato!). It's a very earthy, gritty kind of magical system, and it feels less about spells and rituals than it does the force of will and nature. 
 Clementine takes awhile to full flower -- for the first half of the book, she seems to be just drifting along, relearning everything she once knew about her town. It doesn't help that she can't remember large chunks of her past. But she starts growing some spine after becoming involved with Fisher, a wild bad boy whose mysterious past and adventures in the Hollow make him a pariah. 
 And in that second half, the whole cast suddenly knits completely, where they were just sort of floating free before -- Fisher, Clementine, the fiery and opinionated Shiny, the timid abused Davenport. They develop a purpose in the story, and everything just gels. 
 "Fiendish" struggles in the first half, because it doesn't quite know how to exposit properly in its setup. But if you can overlook that flaw, the spellbinding magical system and gritty, realistic setting make it a genuinely haunting read.