PW #355: Young Adult Mystery (Own Voices): A TASTE OF DARKNESS

Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentor: Stephanie Scott
Mentee: Sarena and Sasha Nanua
Title: A TASTE OF DARKNESS
Category/Genre: Young Adult Mystery (Own Voices)
Word Count: 67,000

Pitch:

When seventeen-year-old Tessa Gill is chosen to compete in Bite Size—the televised teen cooking competition—she’s set on fighting for a scholarship her family could never afford. As the competition begins, she discovers cryptic letters written by her late chef grandfather hidden throughout the culinary institute. Tessa must now uncover the truth behind the letters before the competition eliminates her. WILLY WONKA meets Chopped.

Excerpt:

The day the bad news broke out in my family’s bungalow, I was cooking Grandpapa’s favourite curry.

Swirling smoke rose from the pot, bringing with it the aromatic smells of spices I wished I could stuff in my pockets and carry everywhere: paprika, cumin, turmeric, and coriander. The kitchen transported me to another place, another world, where I could create anything I desired. Wanted.

But I’d never told anyone that. Never told anyone how one of my greatest wishes was to escape Harkwood, a poor excuse for a town—and my inevitable future at Harkwood College, an even poorer excuse for a university. Not to Ma or Papa, though they had figured out as much. Not to my three remaining grandparents, who shared our bungalow and spent their days snoring and sleeping, knitting and reading.

A yelp pierced the air. “Tessa!” my five-year-old brother Rishi shouted, running by me with arms outstretched like a plane’s wings. I dropped the spoon to the counter with a clatter, curry splashing onto the business school brochures I’d brushed aside this morning.

Something like a frog’s dying croak sounded from the driveway. I skipped over the paisley-patterned rug that swallowed the living room floor and squinted through the window. Someone was pulling up in a beaten grey 2003 Civic, engine groaning.

Only one person I knew owned that car. But Papa was never home early. Unless something had happened….