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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
Excellent book full of creepy feels, witches, and relationships. A book about mothers and daughters and regret. Possibly the worst audiobook I’ve ever made it most of the way through. The readers were okay but you can’t hear them half the time and other half of the time they are too loud. I stopped and got the physical book and it was much better.
Dark, delightfully not tooo "teen," interesting and a bit different from what's out there currently
Melissa Albert continues to be an excellent storyteller. I breezed right through this book.
She writes magical realism & suspense perfectly. Slow burn, cliffhangers that don’t make you realize they’re cliffhangers, you just keep reading. Atmospheric, putting you right in the story.
I appreciated both timelines in this book. I wanted to understand all the characters; powerful women and each flawed in their own ways. I like the intentionality of flawed female characters; they force me to examine my own internalized misogyny. Even the characters you strongly dislike (hi, Ivy. The more I got to know you the more I found myself rolling my eyes), you appreciate and understand the necessary purpose they bring to the plot.
I read this without knowing what it was about, I just knew I loved The Hazelwood and Albert’s writing style, and I’m glad I did it that way because it made the mystery richer.
If you like suspense, witchy stuff and unreliable narrators (who you still root for) with some little love stories squeezed in, I think you’ll love this one. I eat this writing style UP.
She writes magical realism & suspense perfectly. Slow burn, cliffhangers that don’t make you realize they’re cliffhangers, you just keep reading. Atmospheric, putting you right in the story.
I appreciated both timelines in this book. I wanted to understand all the characters; powerful women and each flawed in their own ways. I like the intentionality of flawed female characters; they force me to examine my own internalized misogyny. Even the characters you strongly dislike (hi, Ivy. The more I got to know you the more I found myself rolling my eyes), you appreciate and understand the necessary purpose they bring to the plot.
I read this without knowing what it was about, I just knew I loved The Hazelwood and Albert’s writing style, and I’m glad I did it that way because it made the mystery richer.
If you like suspense, witchy stuff and unreliable narrators (who you still root for) with some little love stories squeezed in, I think you’ll love this one. I eat this writing style UP.
I love the imagery Melissa Albert weaves in her books, even without the magic elements. This was an exciting read and I was sad to see it end.
Another TBR book which has been on my shelf for years.
I liked that the start was a slow burn, it really set the character development in both timelines/eventsThe dual narrative and timelines should how different Ivy and Dana were as people.
This has a dark feel to it, more so in Dana’s timeline, which I preferred, although one of my most liked part was when Ivy found out the truth about the boy next door.
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I liked that the start was a slow burn, it really set the character development in both timelines/eventsThe dual narrative and timelines should how different Ivy and Dana were as people.
This has a dark feel to it, more so in Dana’s timeline, which I preferred, although one of my most liked part was when Ivy found out the truth about the boy next door.
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Scoring this one is tough for me. I think the students who like witches and the supernatural will really enjoy this story. In fact, students who like a creepy mystery may gravitate to it. However, both the cover and the name do not scream that it is a creepy mystery so they may not pick it off the shelf. Overall the story has depth and the reader can be drawn into the two POVs; the daughter’s and mother’s stories are intense and intertwined. For me, I felt uncomfortable throughout the story; torn between wanting to know what happens in the end and who was the strange girl in the water, and wanting to stop reading it. I just didn’t enjoy it. That being said, I don’t always share my students’ taste in books and overall this meets fairly good marks according to the rubric.
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
The plot kept going backwards. Move the story along. We get it. Mom is a witch and tried to keep her daughter away. Move it along folks.
This is a book where I wish there was a 1/2 star option to the rating system. I liked the story as well as the narration coming from multiple characters. It was exciting, but not as much of a page turner as I was hoping. I also appreciated that while some of the book is told from the "adults are useless" point of view of teenagers, that wasn't the dominant tone as I've found with other YA stories.