Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - The Children on the Hill

in the 1970s, Vi and her brother live with their brilliant psychiatrist grandmother, who brings home a new "sister" for them. Iris is mute and has injuries. Slowly she comes out of her shell and the children have a club where they imagine they will hunt monsters. In modern day, now as adults, one of the sisters is hunting the other one, who she suspects of being a serial killer. Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, it is pretty obvious which sister is the latter-day narrator, so the surprise falls flat. There are a couple of other twists that are pretty obvious. There is a fake out regarding the murdering sister that was nicely done, but then it is walked back. On one hand, I think the book needed that final punch, but on the other hand, I am not sure how I feel about it affecting the message of the book about people being the real monsters.

If people are the real monsters (and Iris believes there are real supernatural monsters too), and you have to kill your monster to start over and live, aren't you also becoming a monster? Are we all just monsters? If so, doesn't that lessen the impact of the "real" monsters among us? Aren't we supposed to be able to rise above our upbringings? You could argue the grandmother created a monster in Vi, but Iris turned out more or less fine. As I said, I am ambivalent.

I would have vastly preferred we spend more time with the adult sister. The story in the past kind of dragged on, since it was super obvious what was happening with both Iris and Vi. I was also hoping for more from the Mary Shelley angle, but oh well. This was a fine book and I enjoyed reading it, but I literally forgot I had even read it two days later, which is reflected in the rating.

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libraryghost's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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readrienne's review against another edition

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mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The book is fine but it’s more YA than I understood from the blurbs.

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gondorgirl's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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chooper454's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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siobhanward's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I don't think this one was my favourite of McMahon's. It just didn't have the creepy vibes of some of the others. It felt like too much was going on and things felt disconnected. I did like the big reveal, that came as a surprise to me, but otherwise there wasn't a ton that stood out to me.

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espressoreader's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book throws the unexpected at a person. It takes eugenics, an aspect of the world past, and likely present, which Americans like to pretend didn’t happen in the USA, and puts it in your face from the perspective of kids. I was surprised multiple times in this book.

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