A review by hrmit
Wake the Bones by Elizabeth Kilcoyne

3.0

This was a pretty solid debut! The first half of the book is where you get most of your characters established and I was really impressed with the way Kilcoyne was able to set up the rural setting in a way that felt honest. There were parts that reminded me a lot of Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo, which I obviously loved, and I was excited early on when the encounters with the horrors felt new and not formulaic.

This stayed true to the end of the novel, but a few aspects were a little flat.

Spoiler

The magic didn't quite click for me, and I think I would have appreciated a little more strife in Laurel's attempts to personally connect with the supernatural. It felt like it came to her a little too easy and I think the magic system could have flourished more if she had had a few more walls to bump into

. I really liked the story between Garret and Isaac, but Ricky didn't seem to have a lot of meat on those romantic interest bones. Just wasn't as fleshed out as everybody else. There was a point where I thought we were headed into a more interesting direction, but we weren't and he just didn't bring a lot to the story for me.

I felt like this could maybe have gone through one more round of editing to give some parts a little more room to grow, and also catch a few lines that felt a little repetitive. But overall it was a really fun southern gothic horror novel, and I'm really looking forward to what Kilcoyne writes next