Reviews

The Furies by Katie Lowe

pachypedia's review against another edition

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3.0

Partiendo de una premisa interesante, la verdad es que el libro se me ha hecho un poco aburrido. Le falta cierta chispa a la historia y a los personajes.

mehsi's review against another edition

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1.0

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.

Welp, I was so looking forward to reading this one. I kept hoping my wish (as I wished for this one) would be granted. And it did! However… it took me 3 days to finally get through this and it wasn’t easy at all. I had to force myself to read a certain amount so I could get through it without it taking to long.

What went wrong? Well, the blurb and the cover looked awesome. Boarding school? Sign me up! Murder? Oh yes! Potential black magic and strange rituals? Ohhhh. What more could I want. Sadly, this story is what I wanted. The boarding school? Well, I wouldn’t call it that as everyone seemed to go home every day. It was more of an elite super school for kids who are smart. Murder? Well there is some murder, but eh.

What else went wrong? The characters mostly. Robin is just a freaking psychopath and should be locked up from the early pages of this book. She is unstable, her mind is unhealthy, she makes it seem like it is all someone’s problem, while she is always the cause of the disturbance or terrible events. She drags people down to hell with her. She only cares about herself it seems. At least what I could read from the book. She makes it seem like she cares all about someone, but then something happens and you see her true colours. She is a manipulative bitch. :{

Violet? Well, she started off pretty decent and I have to say I liked her at the start, smart, responsible, but as soon as she gets involved with the group of girls, and especially Robin, she changes to a weak, unstable, wtf is wrong with you girl. I was so frustrated with her constantly as she kept doing things that no one should ever do. And sure, peer pressure is a thing, but this went much further than that. She went to use drugs, drank all the time, was spineless and constantly cared only for the compliments of the girls (especially Robin) and would do anything and everything for them. Like with the Dean? She could have just ran away or say no or anything, but instead she did all those things. I just wanted to shake her. Later on things escalate further to the point that I was just cringing and wondering what the hell was wrong with her. Eventually I would call her almost as bad as Robin. Maybe less crazy though (just a bit), but still unhealthy.
I guess the whole accident that happened back when she was younger and that costed her not only her father but also her sister, and following that her mom who fell into addiction and neglect, also didn’t help with things. Maybe if she had a good family, parents who care about her, maybe she wouldn’t have fallen for the tricks of Robin, maybe she could have been stronger. All those ifs, and we will never find out.

As for the other two girls. Well, they were around and at times they had their says, we see that things aren’t good for Grace due to her abusive father, but other than that, these two just fell in the shadows/background quite fast. They were part of the group, but the focus of the book was clearly the very unhealthy relationship between Robin and Violet.

Annabel, I do wonder how much she knew. Did she know what her students were up to? I am guessing yes. This given various situations were with one glance she seemed to tell all, and with her speeches, her warnings, and then later on something else. If she truly knew, why didn’t she stop the girls? Why didn’t she cut them off from the early times?

I actually felt sorry for Nicky. She was a gossip, at times seemed to only care about that and spreading it, she also seemed like the most fun character. Quite a few times she talks to Violet, tries to be there for her and invited her to parties and such.

The story borders on boring to wtf am I reading, and I really had to push and push myself to keep reading. The speeches by the teachers, while I did like that they fitted the theme of what was going on at the moment, were also terribly dull.

The whole Dean thing and how that ended…. just o.0

I have to be honest and say that I still have no idea who killed
Spoiler Emily.
Really, with all that happened in this book and how my mind just seemed to tune out at times, now that I think back, I just don’t know. Probably really terrible of me, but sorry this story just sucked the joy out of me.

The ending made everything even worse. The things that happened in there, the girl on the swing, the thing with Grace and Alex, and then there is Violet’s decision. What the actual hell? Why would you do that? After all that happened…

I could probably give a ton of more reasons why this book wasn’t for me, but frankly I want to forget about this book and just go to my next (hopefully) better read. I am sure there is an audience for this book, but it isn’t me.

Also BIG BIG Warning for the rape scene. Yes, there is one, and yes I would count it as that given the character’s reactions and her clearly being against what was happening. Later on it also has consequences for her mental health, she is just not stable. It is not going well. She keeps getting flashbacks. :\

Review first posted at https://twirlingbookprincess.com/

hmbb99's review against another edition

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2.0

A prestigious private girl's school, four young students, and a school's history of witchcraft, this story has all this, yet still misses the mark. I enjoyed the story of the girls' friendship, which was riddled with jealousy, anger, and love, and I enjoyed the witchcraft aspects. I thought the story was muddled by the extraneous references to art and art theory. It made the story difficult to follow, almost as if you had to be an art expert to relate the art history to the plot. The story often jumped in time without any indication that time had passed, making me have to reread passages to figure out what was happening and when. I had high hopes for this book but was left feeling less than satisfied when it was done.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book. The opinions are my own.

betwixt_the_pages's review against another edition

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3.0

Rating: 3.5/5 Penguins
Quick Reasons: poetic, lyrical prose; characters that felt a bit "doll-like" or indecisive, flighty, wishy-washy; I feel like certain motivations were lacking, or totally unclear; WHY?!


I'm going to be honest, Penguins--this is the second time I'm writing this review, because I forgot to hit CTRL+C on my original version and lost it due to a time-out of the webpage. UUUUUGH. Let's see if I can remember the gist of my points, and maybe make myself a little more clear than I was the first go-round, shall we? This is going to be a shorter review for me, for reasons you'll find below.

"The fact of tragedy, then, is this: we're doomed to hurt the ones we love, faults amplified from fleeting thought to heinous crime. The deadly sins are just that--our furies turning fate, which in turn begets fury at our fallen condition: each the shadow of the other."


The prose in this book is absolutely BREATHTAKING. Poetic, lyrical, atmospheric. Oftentimes, just reading through the pages, I found myself in awe of Katie Lowe's knack for taking a simple sentence and making it into something stunning. The author weaved this from the finest silks of words, each row effortless and without tangles. Her characters, on the other hand, felt little more than shells of people. I say this because I felt like they were lacking in motivation. A lot of this story felt as if it was being written "on the fly" ; I didn't feel as if there were a point, a destination, toward which we were following these girls, but instead some nameless place unknown. Violet, especially, seemed more confused than anything. The few small moments where she followed her own mind or found her own voice, she followed up by being dragged along like a puppet behind the others. If the others weren't around to lead her, she flailed, and did things that were reckless and not what I would have anticipated. She seemed to flounder, a LOT--and that left me confused and unsure exactly who we were following, or how to feel about it. This, coupled with a feeling that these characters and their story needed a little more fleshing out, a little more skin and bones, made it very difficult for me to form any sort of connection.

Our hands left pastel prints in homage across the school: library books with green thumbs, a peach palm around a test tube, blue lips printed on coffee cups and one another's cheeks. The lesson, I suppose (Annabel, the art tutor, rarely leading us to an obvious conclusion--or any conclusion at all) was that the artist leaves her mark on everything she touches.


As much as I enjoyed the journey merely because of the prose and how beautiful the sentences are, I left feeling vaguely disappointed, with no clear or discernible reasons as to why. On top of being unable to form a connection, I felt as if some of the circumstances that arose in these pages, had no real purpose even being there--as if, after writing the novel out, the author felt it lacked drama, and went back and added certain things in. Violet, especially, was as confusing a character as she was confused throughout her tale, thinking one thing and then turning around and doing the complete opposite. Still, Penguins.... The Furies is a read that will enrapture you, if you remember to bring a little magic to your mind while reading.

ettaenni's review against another edition

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3.0

Jumalten verta suonissamme on kuvaus neljästä elämänjanoisesta teinitytöstä, joiden ympärille tuntuu kietoutuvan väkivallan ja kuoleman peitto. Tapahtumat kerrotaan takaumana Violetin näkökulmasta. Violet saapuu tyttöjen sisäoppilaitokseen yksinäisenä ja ulkopuolisena, kunnes tutustuu hurjaan ja karismaattiseen Robiniin sekä tämän kahteen ystävään. Violet haluaa paikoin jopa epätoivoisesti kuulua porukkaan ja on loppujen lopuksi valmis tekemään mitä vain todistaakseen sen.

Kirja kietoutuu noitavainojen, okkultismin ja taikuuden ympärille samaan aikaan hienovaraisesti ja vahvasti. Tytöt alkavat uskoa taikuuteen ja sen suomin oikeuksin jakaa oikeutta pienessä kylässään. Kirjan kannatteleva teema on alussa kuvaillut kaksi kuolemantapausta: tyttö keinussa ja Emily Frostin mysteerinen kuolintapaus.

Kirja on tiivistunnelmainen ja kiehtova. Ite halusin ehdottomasti tietää miten tarina päättyy ja miten tytöille käy. Tää ei kuitenkaan ollut mikään kovin järisyttävä kirja. Mun tuli tästä vähän mieleen Eikä yksikään joka häneen uskoo, mutta parempana. Kirja alkaa kuolemalla ja kirjan edetessä kerrotaan, miten siihen on päädytty. Jumalten verta suonissamme on kuitenki hahmoiltaan, miljööltään ja juoneltaan kiinnostavampi.

laurazdavidson's review against another edition

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2.0

A girl is found dead, beautiful and perfect, on the swings at an exclusive private girls school... This should have been the opening to a great mystery novel. I was expecting The Craft; I was expecting a taut, intense thriller. I got neither. Very disappointed. There were so many opportunities here that were just squandered.

colorfulleo92's review against another edition

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2.0

I wanted to like this more than I did. It started out promising, a boarding school for girls, a murder mystery, talks about witch craft and off things happen. It has all the things that I should enjoy reading about yet I didn't like it, wasn't exciting and by the end I just wanted to be done with the story and found a few issues with the book that I didn't like, for example drug use. I'm disappointed but this wasn't for me

griffonvagabond's review against another edition

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3.0

This book took all the things I love and made me feel... nothing. I had no real connection to the characters. The writing was lovely but I wasn't absorbed. I still recommend the read because it was mildly enjoyable. I just, missed the connection to the characters. I'll go on to read more of this author's work but this book just didn't do it for me.

sammyd's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

tillytrio's review against another edition

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1.0

I actually ended up abandoning this book because I found the plot slow and tedious.
The main characters weren’t particularly likeable and two of them seemed irrelevant.