Extasia

A girl in the village of Haven is about to be named a saint, one of four. The elders will mark her and put the red hood on her head. With her sisters she will face the evil beneath the black mountain, which has already killed nine of the village's men. She does not give her name.

She keeps her own secrets. White-eyed beasts follow her, and faceless gray women as tall as houses. She has also seen two girls kiss in the elm grove. Becoming a saint, she believes, will wipe out her mother's shame and spare her people from destruction.

This is YA folk horror with strong religious and feminist strands. Haven is a village where even looking in a mirror is a sin, and the elders rule through piety. To fight the darkness stalking the village, the heroine must join a secret coven and take up a power forbidden to women and saints alike.

The book also carries a sapphic thread: a shared kiss that could save two girls or damn them. The tone is bleak and bloody, with dread running through it. Female rage, sisterhood and the cost of leaving a patriarchal cult drive the story, and the elders may prove a deadlier danger than the evil they claim to fight.