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lonnaeh's review against another edition
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
My least favorite of Tiffany's book, while it has a strong beginning and middle, the ending just completely ruined the book. I was expecting something super natural and horror and it just let me down and got resolved fairly quickly
nightshade_1's review against another edition
4.0
“Something blooms inside my chest and I rip it at the root.”
⥼~-✰-~⥽ ☽ ˚•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙˚＊☾ ⥼~-✰-~⥽
ೃ︵➷ At first I was really unsure about this book but it has been on my tbr for quiet some time and honestly im glad i was able to pick this book up!
It was very very slow introduction at first but I want to say after 50 pages in it started to get really good and spooky.
The family moved to a new city start a new life, the mum remarried gaining new siblings which is always hard to get along. There are a few complications along the way Mari does not get along with her younger sister Piper which always gets her into trouble.
Mari soon realises it’s not her that’s making the house haunted it’s already haunted the minute they moved in.. creepy things started to happen.
Mari does struggle to fit in she misses home back in California with her dad. She recently got into trouble with doing drugs at her old school. She’s having the anticipation of needing a supplier in her new school.
The haunting of this book comes out real fast things creeping the floorboards, hands coming out of showers curtains.. like what’s more creepy than that!?
The whole area where this house is seems very sus how everything is abandoned this Mr Sterling guy I found very creepy when he talked to the family like he knew what going on more with the house waiting for bad things to happen…
I can’t wait to see if there’s another book of this and continue to see if we find out what happened to everyone!
⥼~-✰-~⥽ ☽ ˚•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙˚＊☾ ⥼~-✰-~⥽
ೃ︵➷ At first I was really unsure about this book but it has been on my tbr for quiet some time and honestly im glad i was able to pick this book up!
It was very very slow introduction at first but I want to say after 50 pages in it started to get really good and spooky.
The family moved to a new city start a new life, the mum remarried gaining new siblings which is always hard to get along. There are a few complications along the way Mari does not get along with her younger sister Piper which always gets her into trouble.
Mari soon realises it’s not her that’s making the house haunted it’s already haunted the minute they moved in.. creepy things started to happen.
Mari does struggle to fit in she misses home back in California with her dad. She recently got into trouble with doing drugs at her old school. She’s having the anticipation of needing a supplier in her new school.
The haunting of this book comes out real fast things creeping the floorboards, hands coming out of showers curtains.. like what’s more creepy than that!?
The whole area where this house is seems very sus how everything is abandoned this Mr Sterling guy I found very creepy when he talked to the family like he knew what going on more with the house waiting for bad things to happen…
I can’t wait to see if there’s another book of this and continue to see if we find out what happened to everyone!
heyshay07's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
scarykarie's review against another edition
4.0
This was a fine book about Marigold (Mari), a teenager who had overdosed and been expelled from her school in California. Her recently blended family is given an offer they can’t refuse to live in a renovated house for free in an up-and-coming neighborhood, but really it’s a front for a gentrification project. The book explores addiction and recovery, family dynamics, the impact of drugs/law enforcement on communities, gentrification, shady religious leaders and even shadier town leadership. I enjoyed the themes, but was ultimately disappointed at the abrupt ending. It felt like half of the plot wasn’t really wrapped up, particularly the religious guy in TV selling “seeds” of prosperity that is an obvious scam and how that works with the town council that was trying to incite a riot amongst its citizens in order to raze the town and build something new on top. We got a lame sentence that Mari would expose the truth, but don’t get the pleasure of seeing the fallout or seeing any major change. The only resolutions at the end were that she realized she can’t punish herself for making a mistake, and her accepting her stepsister Piper as her real sister/someone she does care about. The rest felt so unresolved. I actually had to double check that the audiobook didn’t slip an entire track. With all that said, there was a subplot about potential ghosts in the neighborhood and there was a scene that was genuinely creepy and gave me the chills. That’s hard to achieve, so I was impressed!
faerylullaby's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
It was fine. The suspense tied in with the mystery of the town was intriguing. The story reads really quickly, which helped. Nothing spectacular, but I enjoyed the conversations being had surrounding town designs geared at supporting racist and classist ideals. I do wish that more of that mystery was explored. The ending felt abrupt and I would have loved to see more about the change in dynamic in the family after everything calms. What happens to the town and it's people and all that.
lesserjoke's review against another edition
2.0
This YA ghost story could have been a run-of-the-mill three-star read for me, but since the ending is so abrupt and unsatisfying, I think two stars feels more appropriate overall. I've had a really hard time getting inside the mindset of the protagonist, a teen girl who's pretty mean to her friends and family even before she starts suspecting that her creepy new house might be haunted. (To give just one illustrative example, she's so hooked on pot that when she can't afford / doesn't know how to score any locally, she guilts her bestie from her last address into mailing her some seeds -- meanwhile noting that it's a federal crime! -- so that she can grow the crop herself in the yard of a theoretically-abandoned property on her block.)
Character misgivings aside, the spooky atmosphere is reasonably effective, as is the sustained plausibility of several possible explanations for what's going on, none of them particularly welcome. Either the building is legitimately possessed by wicked spirits, or there are intruders sneaking around the place at night, or the heroine's preteen stepsister is secretly malevolent-bordering-on-murderous. But the final twist revealing a dastardly scheme behind certain developments is absurdly convoluted and not given anywhere near enough narrative space to justify itself. In the end this horror title mostly gets an eye-roll out of me.
[Content warning for anxiety, bedbugs, gaslighting, racism, and mention of child molestation.]
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Character misgivings aside, the spooky atmosphere is reasonably effective, as is the sustained plausibility of several possible explanations for what's going on, none of them particularly welcome. Either the building is legitimately possessed by wicked spirits, or there are intruders sneaking around the place at night, or the heroine's preteen stepsister is secretly malevolent-bordering-on-murderous. But the final twist revealing a dastardly scheme behind certain developments is absurdly convoluted and not given anywhere near enough narrative space to justify itself. In the end this horror title mostly gets an eye-roll out of me.
[Content warning for anxiety, bedbugs, gaslighting, racism, and mention of child molestation.]
Like this review?
--Throw me a quick one-time donation here!
https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
--Subscribe here to support my writing and weigh in on what I read next!
https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
--Follow along on Goodreads here!
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6288479-joe-kessler
--Or click here to browse through all my previous reviews!
https://lesserjoke.home.blog
olpgurl's review
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
erine's review against another edition
3.0
I have mixed feelings about this.
I listened to the story, and while I liked the narrator’s voice, their volume levels were erratic (any time there was a thump or a knock it was like a commercial break) and their pronunciation of some words was incredibly irritating. Some of them just seemed wrong. The protagonist’s name was Marigold (Mare-ih-gold, right?) but pronounced Merry-gold, and shortened to Mari (Mary or maybe Marr-ee in my mind) pronounced Morry or Maury. Every time I heard it, it was so disjointed to hear Merry-gold and Maury.
The story itself jammed a lot in a little space. Blended family, addiction to pain medication, severe anxiety, new kid in school, racism, Detroit vibes, racial tension, for-profit prisons, gentrification, propaganda, corporate white supremacist villains, a little romance, sibling conflict, false pedophilia accusations, religious fanaticism. Some of these pieces mixed together better than others.
The corporate control that the Sterling foundation represents is totally believable, but Mr. Sterling himself reads as a caricature of a hypnotist or puppet master, with no real explanation of how he has such a high degree of control over the population. There seemed to be a long, slow build up of a culture of fear and secrets, but it was written a little more ham-fisted, especially the mob scene at the end. The neighbors lacked full human complexity, arriving only to berate Mari’s family or go on an arson spree at the behest of Mr. Sterling. Simultaneously, no one else was supposed to live on Mari’s street.
The spook factor was high and left me not sure about what was real or ghostly until the very end. And even then I was suspicious about what I was reading, like I couldn’t quite trust the textual evidence. I loved the ending. Maybe just to be contrary, but given the entire story’s muddled vibe, the minimal resolution and fade to black actually gave me a pretty solid sense of satisfaction. Not that I didn’t want to know more, but it fit with the story.
There’s a Detroit vibe that I thought came through in the story, confirmed here: https://ew.com/books/tiffany-d-jackson-shares-inspirations-behind-white-smoke-horror-novel/#:~:text=The%20inspiration%20behind%20the%20tale,house%20story%2C%22%20Jackson%20says.
I listened to the story, and while I liked the narrator’s voice, their volume levels were erratic (any time there was a thump or a knock it was like a commercial break) and their pronunciation of some words was incredibly irritating. Some of them just seemed wrong. The protagonist’s name was Marigold (Mare-ih-gold, right?) but pronounced Merry-gold, and shortened to Mari (Mary or maybe Marr-ee in my mind) pronounced Morry or Maury. Every time I heard it, it was so disjointed to hear Merry-gold and Maury.
The story itself jammed a lot in a little space. Blended family, addiction to pain medication, severe anxiety, new kid in school, racism, Detroit vibes, racial tension, for-profit prisons, gentrification, propaganda, corporate white supremacist villains, a little romance, sibling conflict, false pedophilia accusations, religious fanaticism. Some of these pieces mixed together better than others.
The corporate control that the Sterling foundation represents is totally believable, but Mr. Sterling himself reads as a caricature of a hypnotist or puppet master, with no real explanation of how he has such a high degree of control over the population. There seemed to be a long, slow build up of a culture of fear and secrets, but it was written a little more ham-fisted, especially the mob scene at the end. The neighbors lacked full human complexity, arriving only to berate Mari’s family or go on an arson spree at the behest of Mr. Sterling. Simultaneously, no one else was supposed to live on Mari’s street.
The spook factor was high and left me not sure about what was real or ghostly until the very end. And even then I was suspicious about what I was reading, like I couldn’t quite trust the textual evidence. I loved the ending. Maybe just to be contrary, but given the entire story’s muddled vibe, the minimal resolution and fade to black actually gave me a pretty solid sense of satisfaction. Not that I didn’t want to know more, but it fit with the story.
There’s a Detroit vibe that I thought came through in the story, confirmed here: https://ew.com/books/tiffany-d-jackson-shares-inspirations-behind-white-smoke-horror-novel/#:~:text=The%20inspiration%20behind%20the%20tale,house%20story%2C%22%20Jackson%20says.
thalassasaur's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25