A review by silkcaramel
The May Queen Murders by Sarah Jude

3.0

"You don't stop loving a person because they have secrets. You make their secrets your own."

I have to say, I was expecting way more from the synopsis. This had the potential to be much better than it was and I'm just sad, because it's not a bad book overall, but it falls short in a number of ways. I love the dark, atmospheric feel of this book and there's something about a secluded community living in the forest and shutting out the 'outside' world that always creeps me out and that helped a lot in getting into the story. While trying to sell the idea of dangerous secrets we keep and how they can affect us, the book went in a very obvious direction from the start and, because of that, it tried to shock in the end, but ended up throwing the so-called plot twists in the readers faces without much context and a very poor explanation just so we wouldn't see it coming. And some of it still ended up pretty obvious to me. The pace was also off - it dragged a lot a first, with things happening too slow and trying to build up momentum for something everyone saw coming since the first few pages. And then, after the big thing happened, everything started to go so fast and like I said, without much development.

Ivy, our main character, is very very annoying - she feels like she always lives in the shadow of her cousin and best friend (who she's obsessed with, btw), but doesn't want to let go of her to live her own life when given the chance. Heather, the cousin, had her reasons (and one of the best plot-twists was related to her), but she was also kind of a bitch. I wasn't compelled to care much for either of them or any of the other characters.

Not even the ambiance could get me into the book and I finished it with the feeling that it could be more, but it wasn't. Thank you, next.