A review by smolbean_reads
Charm and Strange by Stephanie Kuehn

1.0

“I am both ever evolving and ever decaying.”

✮✮✮ 2.5 Stars

Odd reading experience with this one. It took me till about 30% the way through to get into it (I REALLY did my best to not DNF this one because i just KNEW something had to be happening), when I finished it I was all WOW 5 STARS!! Then I didn't have time to review it and in between time it's gone down to a 2.5 star as for me it's not a lingering/never-forget kind of book. It's not one that connected with me on a Katherine level. But don't get me wrong, it was a good read though and people really into mysterious and dark YA books will definitely really like it, so don't take my 2.5 rating literally!

With a past and present split of narration, our first impressions are that main character Win is a thoroughly messed up emo kid who gets a kick out of hurting people (pun intended). There's a lot of WTF? moments but if you stick with it, the book slowly unfolds and the mysteries start unraveling. As a lot of other reviewers have said, its tricky to review this book without giving too much away!

This is a very dark book and if you're not okay with uncomfortable subjects then you might want to give it a miss. However, it is written in such a clever way and you appreciate how well Stephanie Kuehn has dealt with the subject matter.

Definitely one for the WTF-did-i-just-read shelf!