Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this book for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

If you like your generational trauma full of magic and Appalachian folk vibes, then this is the book for you! Alli Dyer did a wonderful job of crafting a character-driven novel sent in the rural South. As someone who has lived in the rural South for much of their life, it was amazing to see faithful illustrations of communities and individuals that I have known. The touch of magic, witchcraft, and folk medicine in this novel, as well as the ways people use and abuse it, was a wonderful touch in an otherwise pretty heavy and realistic narrative.

Parts of the novel were a little slow, but it was overall one that I greatly enjoyed.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this book for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I want to start by saying I loved the two leads in this book. Their struggles with identity, societal pressures, and feelings for each other were written so well. They were likeable characters without being perfect, which is wonderful.

The human villains of this story and the two leads fighting against their misogyny and transphobia felt like a very timely message as trans youth is villainized more and more in the media and politics. This made them all the more terrifying, and it made the story quite harrowing.

My biggest complaint is that this novel feels a bit falsely advertised. The cover and description lead me to believe there would be a lot more monster action. While I appreciate the choice to make the more terrifying evil the human one, I still couldn't help but wish for more monster page time. The monster hardly shows up for having such a prominent picture on the cover and in the description.

All in all, a good book, and one that is needed for our time, just a little disappointed with the monster/fantasy aspect.

Publication date: 10 September 2024

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this book for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Wow wow wow. I love poetry, fantasy, and some realistic fiction, and this book combined all those genres in such beautiful and wonderful ways. The writing was is so lyrically beautiful, and I fell in love with Mackerel Sky and its flawed inhabitants. I am also a big sucker for stories that intertwine separate story threads in unexpected ways, and this book succeeded in doing this so well.

I have admittedly not read much of the magic realism genre, but from what I have read, this fits snugly into that genre, with an honest blend of everyday life in a small Maine town with supernatural elements like curses and mermaids.

I am typically not one for comparisons between authors, but much of this book and its descriptions of everyday life struck me as similar to Fredrick Backman's narrative style. It struck the same emotions that Backman's work has struck in me, and I mean that as truly high praise!

I will eagerly await more releases from this author. Congrats on such an incredible debut!

Publication date: 27 February 2024

Thank you to the author for providing me an ARC of this book. This does not affect my review at all, and all thoughts are my own.

For the most part, this book was not for me. I kept some notes while reading, but the cons far outweighed the pros during my reading. I do think there are folks out there who will like this more than I did, so keep that in mind as you read my review.

Pros:
1) Town setting was described very well. I got a very good picture of Thera's town from the description offered. I enjoyed the beginning portion of the novel where she was around her hometown the most because of the description and pleasant visuals.
2) Katrienne was a very lovable and unique character. She was feisty and adorable, and by far my favorite!
3) Jev Warren and his invisible companion gave him a good motive and kept the momentum of the story building well.
4)

Spoiler

The collective revenge of the female soldiers for Thera's friend who was raped and then killed by the male soldiers was pretty damn badass.

Cons:
1) The plot was muddy at parts. The politics of this world did not feature in the novel at all, and that made the whole reason the army was out and about incomprehensible to me. I think knowing who Warren's superior was and what his specific orders were/how he was able to circumvent said orders and slaughter innocents so easy would have made that clearer. The shifts between time, place, and character were also not always well documented (Chapter 16 comes to mind), which made puzzling together what exactly occurred between the lines of the chapters difficult.
2) Character monologues: while this provided some nice detail on the characters themselves, it was a boring way to discover more about this world. I would much rather see these things unfurl than have characters explain their actions so explicitly.
3) Undefined words related to the story. I constantly found myself wishing for a glossary to define such terms as murmeck, dragoon, threads, etc. I think having a list of these words and perhaps a brief explanation of the magic system at the back of the book would make some of the muddier parts easier to follow.
4) And my biggest complaint: oversexualization of the female characters and their F/F relationship. As a sapphic person myself, the relationship between Thera and Adel felt wildly unrealistic and meant for a male gaze more than anything else. I did not believe in their love for each other because it was all based solely in lust. It was very hard for me to read their more intimate scenes because it didn't read like a true sapphic relationship. This rating would have gained at least one star more if it weren't for how this couple was represented. All in all, even the badass female revenge plotline couldn't make up for how much the sapphic representation let me down.