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mariyavd's review
3.0
Thank you, NetGalley and Brigids Gate Press, LLC. for providing me this book. My honest opinion: The first part (which was longer) gave me a "prologue" vibes. The kids playing their mean games to be the "Queen", their everyday life and tasks. I was expecting part two to be more... exciting, something to happen. But then it was even less dinamic than the first part. It felt unfinished.
I did enjoy the gothic vibes, then idea behind the games (at least from the point of view I understand it).
I did enjoy the gothic vibes, then idea behind the games (at least from the point of view I understand it).
gothgirls_readingnook's review
4.0
“Dead Moths. Dead Butterflies. Dead spiders.”
A nine-year old girl named Rosalyn lives at an orphanage with a group of other girls her age. Who finds themselves bored. Rosalyn invents a game, that quickly took a turn for the worst…
Gothic-Horror Novella set in 1926
My Thoughts
Merged review:
“Dead Moths. Dead Butterflies. Dead spiders.”
A nine-year old girl named Rosalyn lives at an orphanage with a group of other girls her age. Who finds themselves bored. Rosalyn invents a game, that quickly took a turn for the worst…
Gothic-Horror Novella set in 1926
My Thoughts
Trigger Warnings:
Gore
Violence
Pranks gone to far
Bullying
Boredom
Horror
Lots of insects
Books Content Warnings:
Intense bullying
Child abuse and endangerment
Child harm
Detailed depictions of child death
Abuse (physical and psychological)
Neglect
Death
Part one:
Kids can be mean and cruel and this book demonstrates that in a horrific manner. These kids took a game too far and paid the price.
Instead of creating a beautiful court of royals they built it on pranks and having to outdo the higher up to become queen. The pranks and games became worse and worse…. I felt bad for the new girls and all the girls that participated in something like this. Girls can be mean.
I think this book is very dark and creepy.
Honestly it’s quite morbid, but not a bad read.
Part two:
I love the rebuild of the home and how the game continued even in the afterlife of the girls.
I feel the new Ambassador knew what he was doing when it came to the house and how to interact with the girls.
I also like how visitors were able to come and see ‘spirits’ and how the Ambassador wrote down all his sightings and interactions, like a researcher would.
I feel the second part went by fast and wanted more. Maybe have the girls find peace and make their way, and Hawthorne house becoming a normal house once again.
Overall it was a great read. Thank you NetGalley and Bridge Gates Press for allowing me to be an ARC reader.
Merged review:
“Dead Moths. Dead Butterflies. Dead spiders.”
A nine-year old girl named Rosalyn lives at an orphanage with a group of other girls her age. Who finds themselves bored. Rosalyn invents a game, that quickly took a turn for the worst…
Gothic-Horror Novella set in 1926
My Thoughts
A nine-year old girl named Rosalyn lives at an orphanage with a group of other girls her age. Who finds themselves bored. Rosalyn invents a game, that quickly took a turn for the worst…
Gothic-Horror Novella set in 1926
My Thoughts
Merged review:
“Dead Moths. Dead Butterflies. Dead spiders.”
A nine-year old girl named Rosalyn lives at an orphanage with a group of other girls her age. Who finds themselves bored. Rosalyn invents a game, that quickly took a turn for the worst…
Gothic-Horror Novella set in 1926
My Thoughts
Trigger Warnings:
Gore
Violence
Pranks gone to far
Bullying
Boredom
Horror
Lots of insects
Books Content Warnings:
Intense bullying
Child abuse and endangerment
Child harm
Detailed depictions of child death
Abuse (physical and psychological)
Neglect
Death
Part one:
Kids can be mean and cruel and this book demonstrates that in a horrific manner. These kids took a game too far and paid the price.
Instead of creating a beautiful court of royals they built it on pranks and having to outdo the higher up to become queen. The pranks and games became worse and worse…. I felt bad for the new girls and all the girls that participated in something like this. Girls can be mean.
I think this book is very dark and creepy.
Honestly it’s quite morbid, but not a bad read.
Part two:
I love the rebuild of the home and how the game continued even in the afterlife of the girls.
I feel the new Ambassador knew what he was doing when it came to the house and how to interact with the girls.
I also like how visitors were able to come and see ‘spirits’ and how the Ambassador wrote down all his sightings and interactions, like a researcher would.
I feel the second part went by fast and wanted more. Maybe have the girls find peace and make their way, and Hawthorne house becoming a normal house once again.
Overall it was a great read. Thank you NetGalley and Bridge Gates Press for allowing me to be an ARC reader.
Merged review:
“Dead Moths. Dead Butterflies. Dead spiders.”
A nine-year old girl named Rosalyn lives at an orphanage with a group of other girls her age. Who finds themselves bored. Rosalyn invents a game, that quickly took a turn for the worst…
Gothic-Horror Novella set in 1926
My Thoughts
littlepiscesreading's review
dark
2.0
The prose is straightforward but not undescriptive. I like the little details that give you a quick insight into each of the girls– Sophie’s ‘little huff'. And this goes for the narrative more broadly too. More subtle forms of realistic horror do tend to be less effective for me as a reader. It can take me some time to put the pieces together and by then it’s gone from subtle to over. Sometimes that’s intentional on the part of the author. Sometimes I’m oblivious. It was very effective here.
Rosalyn’s voice isn’t without character, and her feelings certainly bleed into the text. There is a matter-of-factness to the prose that I find lends itself well to the casual cruelty of the children. This is just what their lives are. This is just what they do. And that was utterly horrifying.
And then we find ourselves in the second part of the book. I still don’t know how to feel about it. I knew that the girls’ game would simmer over at some point and I sat there, breathless, as it did. It remained as gothic but there was a noticeable shift in the type of horror it portrayed. It felt like a change of genre. And by the end I felt like I had read two books, not one.
A pity. The first was brilliant. I thought the second would hone in on the idea of self-inflicted torment that I ached to read. It did. It both faded into the background and became more blatant, this time by having it outright stated more than once. The narration shifted too. It became more internal, more repetitive. ‘If Rosalyn remained, he thought it likely that the rest of the children did as well’ and ‘he highly doubted that only Rosalyn had remained’ are from the same paragraph.
There are interesting ideas in the second. I wish they had been executed well. However it opened a chasm that distanced the reader from the girls and undercut the mounting horror it had built to so effectively. On a formatting note, I use dark theme and the clover line breaks did not resemble clovers. A little more definition would have served the illustrations well.
Thanks to Book Sirens and Hadassah Shiradski for this review copy. I leave this review voluntarily.
Rosalyn’s voice isn’t without character, and her feelings certainly bleed into the text. There is a matter-of-factness to the prose that I find lends itself well to the casual cruelty of the children. This is just what their lives are. This is just what they do. And that was utterly horrifying.
And then we find ourselves in the second part of the book. I still don’t know how to feel about it. I knew that the girls’ game would simmer over at some point and I sat there, breathless, as it did. It remained as gothic but there was a noticeable shift in the type of horror it portrayed. It felt like a change of genre. And by the end I felt like I had read two books, not one.
A pity. The first was brilliant. I thought the second would hone in on the idea of self-inflicted torment that I ached to read. It did. It both faded into the background and became more blatant, this time by having it outright stated more than once. The narration shifted too. It became more internal, more repetitive. ‘If Rosalyn remained, he thought it likely that the rest of the children did as well’ and ‘he highly doubted that only Rosalyn had remained’ are from the same paragraph.
There are interesting ideas in the second. I wish they had been executed well. However it opened a chasm that distanced the reader from the girls and undercut the mounting horror it had built to so effectively. On a formatting note, I use dark theme and the clover line breaks did not resemble clovers. A little more definition would have served the illustrations well.
Thanks to Book Sirens and Hadassah Shiradski for this review copy. I leave this review voluntarily.
hauntedvictoria24's review
5.0
This was great! I loved how creepy and disturbing it is. The characters were well developed and the setting was great. This is now one of my favorite ghost stories. I HIGHlY recommend this to anyone who enjoys ghost stories and horror books. Special Thank You to Hadassah Shiradski,RDS Publishing, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.
devonhailey31's review
3.0
This book started out kinda rough, and I was tempted to DNF it while reading the first chapter because that chapter alone was so long, but after I got through the first chapter, it got much more exciting and became a quicker read. I really enjoyed the setting, the plot, and the characters. This book reminded me a lot of one of my favorite books, House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland, given the girls and their relationships, and a few other things that I won’t mention so I don’t risk spoiling either book. This was the perfect spooky read to prepare me to start reading all my fall books, and I’d recommend it.
I know the first chapter is long, and seems to drag on forever, but I promise, the read is worth it.
3.5⭐️ rating overall
I know the first chapter is long, and seems to drag on forever, but I promise, the read is worth it.
3.5⭐️ rating overall
liadanblue's review
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
This is a great little gothic horror short. The setting is spooky enough but when you add in children who only get creepier by the page turn, you’ve got the perfect night time read.
Thank you #netgalley for chance to read this.
Thank you #netgalley for chance to read this.
pomengranate_moon_'s review
3.0
Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC.
What Happened at Hawthorne House is half ghost story and half examination of trauma in pre-adolescent girls. The first 60% of this story is very strong. It focuses on the girls, their social order, and their cruelty toward one another. This makes for a disturbing but very realistic portrayal of young girls who have experienced massive trauma. The second portion of this story focuses on a man over a decade into the future trying to buddy up to the spirits in the house so that he can fix the property for a new purpose. The second half of the book honestly detracted from the first half. The children are far more interesting than this random dude.
This is a quick read that’s overall pretty interesting. Worth checking out for sure.
What Happened at Hawthorne House is half ghost story and half examination of trauma in pre-adolescent girls. The first 60% of this story is very strong. It focuses on the girls, their social order, and their cruelty toward one another. This makes for a disturbing but very realistic portrayal of young girls who have experienced massive trauma. The second portion of this story focuses on a man over a decade into the future trying to buddy up to the spirits in the house so that he can fix the property for a new purpose. The second half of the book honestly detracted from the first half. The children are far more interesting than this random dude.
This is a quick read that’s overall pretty interesting. Worth checking out for sure.
receptively_reviewed's review
2.0
What Happened at Hawthone House was a little novella about young girls in an Orphanage who antagonize one another for the first 60% of the book. The other 40% is told from a different POV of ‘What happened’.
As of novella, I feel it had the potential to expand on the interesting storyline, dive into character development, and answer a few of my unanswered questions. The remaining 40% lacked the depth to complete a full tale. Nothing felt wrapped up at the end.
Who is the Matron? Why was she so scary? What of the girls’ past? How did they come up with the game? What happened to the visitors and to future ones? What happened to the house?
As a writer, Hadassah Shiradski is pretty damn good. I say she has great potential once her craft finally finds it’s full voice.
As of novella, I feel it had the potential to expand on the interesting storyline, dive into character development, and answer a few of my unanswered questions. The remaining 40% lacked the depth to complete a full tale. Nothing felt wrapped up at the end.
Who is the Matron? Why was she so scary? What of the girls’ past? How did they come up with the game? What happened to the visitors and to future ones? What happened to the house?
As a writer, Hadassah Shiradski is pretty damn good. I say she has great potential once her craft finally finds it’s full voice.
mandapanda83's review
3.0
This book definitely had that creepy, Gothic horror novel vibe. This book was fast paced. Set in an orphanage, a group of young girls play a game, that basically boils down to who can play the worst tricks on each other. The worse the prank, the higher up the hierarchy you land. This leads to the demise of them all, but it's not truly the end, now is it?
I did enjoy this book, but I would have liked a little more character development. There was a lot of characters to keep track of and it was hard to distinguish between some of them at times.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I did enjoy this book, but I would have liked a little more character development. There was a lot of characters to keep track of and it was hard to distinguish between some of them at times.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
caireeds's review
3.0
A semi-short gothic child-centered horror story about a "harmless" game that just went too far.
This was a quick and easy read and one that fits into the gothic horror genre pretty well.
I gave this book 3 stars because the storyline just didn't really stand out to me.
The writing was good and there were times where the plot kept me on my toes. However, I have a feeling this book will fall from my memory soon after finishing it.
It sort of just blends in with the other horror books I have read.
Still a good read for anyone looking for something quick and easy to get through.
This was a quick and easy read and one that fits into the gothic horror genre pretty well.
I gave this book 3 stars because the storyline just didn't really stand out to me.
The writing was good and there were times where the plot kept me on my toes. However, I have a feeling this book will fall from my memory soon after finishing it.
It sort of just blends in with the other horror books I have read.
Still a good read for anyone looking for something quick and easy to get through.