In the story, Emma's four years old. She gets out of bed and pads across the floor in her footie pajamas. When she reaches her hand between the bars, the thing in the crib moves closer. It tries to bite her and she takes her hand out again but doesn't back away. They spend all night looking at each other in the dark. In the morning, the thing is still crouched on the lamb-and-duckling mattress pad, staring at her. It isn't her brother.
It's me.
It's me.
The Replacement is a supernatural teen novel by Brenna Yovanoff, dealing with depression low self-esteem grief bullying baby-stealing, murderous Fair Folk! Set in the town of Gentry, it is narrated by a boy named Mackie Doyle, or rather, the creature that took Malcolm Doyle's place.
Tropes present in this work:
- Alliterative Name: Roswell Reed. Also Carlina Carlyle.
- Always Identical Twins: Drew and Danny Corbett, Mackie and Roswell's mutual friends, count as this as they greatly resemble each other and they share a talent for drawing and fixing things.
- Big Brother Instinct: Emma is this for Mackie. Tate is also this for Natalie.
- Bittersweet Ending: Natalie is rescued and The Lady is killed, it's unclear what's going to happen to Gentry as the Morrigan doesn't believe in stealing children.
- Changeling Tale: Played with as Mackie knows from the start that he isn't his parents biological child, and the word "changeling" is only dropped once.
- Chekhov's Gun: Jenna Porter, member of Alice's Girl Posse is described as often wearing a pair of red shoes with flowers at the toes, even with her Halloween costume. It's thanks to these shoes that Mackie is able to identify her body after she dies in the church fire.
- Chekhov's Skill: Mackie's bass playing skills come in handy when he's bargaining with the Morrigan.
- Chick Magnet: Roswell isn't conventionally handsome like one would expect, but Mackie describes how when he talks to other girls, their faces light up like they can't believe he's talking to them
- Cluster F-Bomb: Most of the teenaged characters drop an F-bomb at least once.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Emma and Mackie's mother, Sharon, was stolen to be a tithe, only she spent the earliest years of her life as a plaything for the Lady before the Morrigan stole her away and took her back to her birth family.
- Dark Is Not Evil/Light Is Not Good: Zigzagged. Ends up somewhere near Blue-and-Orange Morality.
- Emo Teen: Apart from being one of Them, Mackie has a real excuse for being sickly and depressed, but it makes a good cover for why he acts weird, skips class and avoids people.
- Equivalent Exchange: The Lady brings wealth and prosperity to the town of Gentry in exchange for eating their stolen children every seven years. Luther and Carlina and their band also give concerts: giving Gentry performances so they can feed off their admiration.
- Eye of Newt: Mackie drinks a hawthorn tonic that alleviates a lot of his symptoms and helps him look healthier.
- Fantastic Religious Weirdness: Mackie's adoptive father is a pastor, and seems determined to save his son's soul despite certain practical difficulties (see Holy Burns Evil below). This led to him building an extension to the church on the adjoining (unconsecrated) lot, where he could teach Sunday school with Mackie in attendance.
- The Fair Folk: "Them" with their aversion to iron and semi annual tithes are essentially fairies in everything but name.
- Friend to All Children: Drew is the one that gathers and comforts Natalie as he joins Mackie, Danny, Roswell, and Tate to rescue her.
- The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: The Lady and the Morrigan have deadly shades of this.
- Grave Robbing: Mackie, Roswell, Drew, and Danny resort to digging up Natalie's buried replacement to switch them back.
- The Great Depression: According to the Lady, Them were stealing children left and right during this time.
- Happily Adopted: Played with. Adopted is putting it loosely with all circumstances considered, but Mackie and Emma are close, and he has a complicated, but loving relationship with the parents that raised him. Furthermore, when Mackie learns from the Morrigan about Malcom Doyle's fate, he shows no interest in the identities or whereabouts of his birth parents.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Mackie tries this.
- Holy Burns Evil: More like Holy Burns Supernatural. Mackie's a good person but can't set foot on consecrated ground (including churches and most graveyards) without having a reaction like an all-over sunburn.
- House Fire: Not residential, but the Lady sets Gendry's church on fire. This same fire kills Jenna Porter, one of Mackie's classmates.
- Human Sacrifice: The town's prosperity is Powered by a Forsaken Child.
- I Am Not Pretty: Emma claims that Mackie is "prettier" than she is.
- Interspecies Romance: Mackie, one of Them gets together with Tate
- Ironic Name: Tate means "cheerful" in English and Norse, but after her youngest sisters supposed death, Tate is anything but cheerful for most of the book.
- Known Only by Their Nickname: Mackie's given name is technically Malcom, but he goes by Mackie not just because Roswell gave it to him but it helps distinguish him and the human Malcom Doyle that was stolen.
- The Magic Goes Away: the Lady mourns the good old days, when her sacrifices were great warriors, and willing. Also, the Morrigan was once a ancient Celtic war goddess, typically taking the image of a young woman. Centuries of the world modernizing has subdued her power, hence her appearing as a creepy tattooed child.
- The Masquerade: A small one. Mackie is actually the only one of Them who tries to live with Muggles; the rest live in their burrow.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Nobody in Roswell's family has lost a child to the Lady, but it's never explained whether the Reed family really is charmed as Roswell jokes or if it's just luck that their children are safe.
- Meaningful Name:
- Gentry can refer to nobility, referring to the towns prosperity. In Irish mythology, fairies are also known as the Gentry-and there is a race of fairies living underground.
- Alpha Bitch Alice Harms' surname is pretty explanatory.
- Mr. Exposition: The Morrigan acts as this explaining the customs of Mayhem.
- Muggles Do It Better: Janice is something of an apothecary is taking classes at the local university (passing for human) to better understand seed germination and other ilk.
- Not Using the Zed Word: Nobody ever calls the blue girls zombies. The closest anyone ever gets is "revenant".
- Odd Friendship: Emma and her fae classmate Janice have this. Like Mackie and Roswell, it also doubles as an Interspecies Friendship.
- Parents as People: Mr. and Mrs. Doyle. Thanks to his fear that Mackie will be targeted for his differences and outed as a replacement, and their family's image will be ruined Mr. Doyle told him at a young age the story of Kellan Caury and how being different got him killed. Mrs. Doyle is particularly tight lipped about the dark secrets of Gentry and her actions towards Emma's fairy lab partner Janice comes off as Fantastic Racism.
- Platonic Declaration of Love: Mackie receives on from The Morrigan before they go their separate ways.
- Popular Is Dumb: Tate thinks of Alice as this, even saying she "hasn't figured out where she left her brain."
- The Power of Love: It's implied that Mackie survived infancy thanks to the love of his sister Emma.
- Preacher's Kid: Emma and Mackie are the children of the local minister.
- Revenge by Proxy: Even though she didn't choose to return to her birth family, Sharon believes They stole Malcom to punish her for leaving.
- Shown Their Work: The aversion to iron, seven year tithes, and dying changelings are all pretty accurate to centuries old fairy and changeling lore.
- Secret-Keeper: Mackie's family is this, doing all they can to keep him safe and healthy. Roswell can also count as this. He and Mackie have never talked about it, but he figured it out.
- Small Role, Big Impact: A good portion of the plot is about rescuing Tate's sister, Natalie, from being another tithe.
- Stepford Suburbia: Nearly everyone in the town of Gentry has had a child go missing or die in their family, but no one ''ever'' talks about it. They just bury quartz and agate in their gardens, hang scissors over the cribs and enjoy their financial prosperity.
- True Companions: Mackie and his best friend Roswell are this.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The opposite—he plan to dig up the revenant that was switched for Natalie and re-switch it is discussed plainly by several characters, so of course the Lady catches them.
- Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Mackie isn't the first changeling to try to live among humans in Gentry: A man named Kellan Caury ran a musical instrument repair shop during the Depression, and was renowned for his skill (and for having an extra joint in all his fingers)— though he'd never fix anything with iron or steel in it. When the sheriff's daughter disappeared, he was immediately singled-out and lynched. Mackie's father uses Caury's story to hammer home how important it is that Mackie keep a low profile.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Malcolm has the fair folk's traditional sensitivity to iron, most particularly "blood iron." Fortunately for his one-man masquerade, his peers assume his illness and fainting are because he just can't stand the sight of blood.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The Replacement takes place in America, but it never specifies which state Gentry belongs to. Though author Brenna Yovanoff stated in an interview that she imagines Gentry would be in Pennsylvania.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Lady has no problem with stealing and eating children once every seven years.
