howlinglibraries's Reviews (1.85k)

He knew then, without any other proof, that she was a mermaid, a real mermaid, and far from wanting her in Barnum’s tank, he wanted her to return to the ocean or to her cottage on the rocks or just go anywhere but there, for Barnum would take all of her magic and twist it out of her until the enchantment was gone, and Levi was afraid for her, so afraid.

When I heard that Christina Henry was writing a story about a mermaid, my first thought was that, as well-known as she is for fantasy retellings, it would be a retelling of The Little Mermaid; that idea intrigued me enough on its own, but when I learned that this was actually to be a historical fiction about the Fiji mermaid in P.T. Barnum’s American Museum, I was totally hooked and knew I had to get my hands on this one. What a fascinating and unique story idea, right?

Freedom was far more intoxicating than safety could ever be.

Not only is the entire plot so magnificently singular and fresh, but its execution? At risk of gushing, it’s flawless. Christina’s writing is so atmospheric, especially in the beginning of the story, where I constantly found myself thinking I could practically taste the salt in the air and hear the waves crashing against the rocky Maine shore.

Women who did what they liked instead of what other people wished were often accused of witchcraft, because only a witch would be so defiant, or so it was thought.

Hidden amidst the whimsy and fantasy, she occasionally hits you in the gut with a powerful quote or observation on the human condition and society’s endless flaws, and you find yourself wondering if you’re reading a historical fairytale or a tongue-in-cheek lesson on feminism and acceptance. Amelia is headstrong and powerful, in part because nobody’s ever told her not to be, and she understands something that many women have stripped away from them at a young age: that taking care of herself and surviving will always be more important than protecting a man’s ego.

“Do not mistake the revelation of my body for the revelation of my heart. My heart keeps its own secrets, and they don’t belong to you or anyone else just because you’ve seen me with a fish tail.”

There’s also a running theme of a woman’s autonomy and how heavily Amelia clings to her freedom; despite the pains she’s been through in life, her greatest adversary at any given time is whatever the greatest threat to her independence. She refuses to be shamed for the shape of her body or exposure of her skin, for her feelings and desires, or even simply for the ways she views the world.

“Until I became a human, nobody ever told me there was something wrong with my body.”

One thing I would like to mention, as I know it is a hard topic to read about for many people, is that there is a brief subplot in the book regarding Amelia’s infertility and how badly she wants to bear a child. As a woman who has also struggled with infertility, I didn’t feel that there were any particularly heavy or triggering scenes, but I wanted to offer a fair warning in case anyone needs to mentally prepare themselves before reading about those struggles.

“Why is a girl less valuable than a boy?”

Even if none of the themes I’ve mentioned here have convinced you to pick up a copy of The Mermaid, let me leave you with this: at the end of the day, under all of its necessary and skillfully woven social commentary, this is a gorgeous historical fantasy tale with remarkable, three-dimensional characters, a plot that never grows stale or slow, and a protagonist that you can’t help but love and root for.

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to Berkley for providing me with this finished copy in exchange for an honest review!

You can find this review and more on my blog, or you can follow me on twitter, bookstagram, or facebook!

DNF @ 51%

There are some extremely important benefits to this book. It features an Indian protagonist who is incredibly feminist and her views on the world and the patriarchy are so refreshing, and sweet, and really lovely. I loved the passion she felt for her filmmaking and the fact that she wanted to become a filmmaker so that she could change the world.

I also really loved Sahil for his geekiness and his full support of her vision. Whenever she goes on rants about the patriarchy, he doesn't even miss a beat, and I loved that, too, as I'm always saying that YA contemporary stories need more feminist guys!

All of the good stuff aside, I personally could not get into this book. The first 15-20% was adorable - I laughed out loud multiple times, smiled from ear to ear, and it gave me all the warm fuzzies. Once it hit about the 20% mark, though, Twinkle became a little bit unbearable. Unfortunately, this is a complaint I have heard many times about Sandhya Menon's debut novel's protagonist, too, but I haven't read that one and can't comment on the comparisons.

Twinkle becomes really self-centered regarding not only her filmmaking (such as getting into multiple arguments with Sahil over minor things like props, totally belittling his opinions as he's "just the producer", and then never apologizing for it even though she admits to herself that she was being unfair), but also her relationship with Sahil. It's brutally obvious from the beginning that he has feelings for her, and even when she recognizes them and starts to reciprocate, she drags him along and treats him pretty poorly, all because his twin brother (who hardly knows she exists) is a "popular kid" and she wants to get in with the popular group.

Between her attitude, and the fact that the plot itself was really bland outside of her exchanges with Sahil or her grandmother (the only likable characters in the book, truly), I finally had to call it a day on this one at 51%. I'm still giving it 3 stars because, like I said, it has some very important values to offer, but all in all, it was definitely not for me.

One last thing: the writing and dialogue are both extremely "young". Twinkle is supposed to be 16, surrounded by 17-year-olds, as far as I understand, but I constantly found myself thinking these teens (aside from Sahil) act like they're more in the 13-14 range. That said, I did not take any points off because I don't agree with down-rating a YA book for featuring teens that act "young" (after all, teens are young people!), but if you don't like that writing style, I'd pass on this one.

Thank you so much to Simon Pulse for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

You can find this review and more on my blog, or you can follow me on twitter, bookstagram, or facebook!

The sea coughed us up, but some day it’s going to reclaim us, and there’s precious little that we can do about it.

I have had a fear of deep water since I was a small child, so—as a horror lover who is not easily shaken—nautical horror is one of my favorite subgenres of both stories and film. When I learned that this sea-themed anthology was coming out, I knew I had to get my hands on it, especially after finding out that a few of my favorite anthology authors were featured in it (Seanan McGuire and Alyssa Wong). That said, most of these authors were new to me, so it was exciting to get a taste of fresh blood, so to speak.

Notably, the biggest stand-outs in the collection for me were What My Mother Left Me by Alyssa Wong, Sister, Dearest Sister, Let Me Show You to the Sea by Seanan McGuire, and A Moment Before Breaking by A.C. Wise, with honorable mentions going to He Sings of Salt and Wormwood by Brian Hodge, and Shit Happens by Michael Marshall Smith.

→ Deadwater – Simon Bestwick ★★★☆☆ ←
It’s the absences that get you, with any death. The gaps, the depths, the holes people leave behind: they’re what we mean by ghosts.

Our first story takes us to a quiet coastal town, in which a sudden death has left the police force thinking “suicide”, and our narrator thinking “murder”. This was less horror and more mild suspense, so it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting from the beginning of the anthology, but I did truly enjoy the writing and found myself invested in the mystery. My main complaint was that there was a lot of cryptic nodding towards the main character’s own troubled past, but we never got any sort of explanation for most of it, which left me feeling like the story wasn’t quite finished.

TW: frequent mentions of suicide and self-harm

→ Fodder’s Jig – Lee Thomas ★★★★☆ ←
For many of the afflicted, dancing was the first symptom.

This tale comes in two parts—the present, and the past—as our narrator regales the story of what happened to his deceased partner after the man contracted a bizarre infection, sprung from masses of bizarre and grotesque flesh washed up on the shoreline. This was probably the single most unique and creative infection story I’ve ever read, and it explains just enough to satisfy, while leaving quite a lot to the imagination. Alongside the description of the ailment, there’s a bit of a commentary on aging, love and loss, and being a homosexual senior in a small town, all of which made the narrator incredibly endearing.

TW: ableism

→ The Curious Allure of the Sea – Christopher Golden ★★☆☆☆ ←
Even heaven could become hell if you were a prisoner there.

When a woman’s father’s boat turns up empty, his body nowhere to be found, she comes across a stone with a bizarre marking on it. As an attempt to find closure, she tattoos the marking upon her forearm, but things suddenly become very strange in her life. While I enjoyed the writing itself, I can’t say I was a big fan of the story—I felt like I was being set up at great lengths for what was ultimately an incredibly disappointing ending.

→ The Tryal Attract – Terry Dowling ★★★☆☆ ←
The sole condition Will Stevens set for letting me spend the night in the room with the skull was telling him everything it said.

After dreaming about the skull from the attic window, a man spends the evening at his neighbor’s home, sleeping in the room with the skull in hopes of hearing its infamous nightly whispers. This was definitely the first genuinely creepy story in the collection, which I appreciated tremendously, as some of the imagery was downright unsettling. Unfortunately, the explanation for the plot felt lackluster and I found myself disappointed with the ending.

→ The Whalers Song – Ray Cluley ★★★★☆ ←
It’s not just whales we’re chasing, Sebjørn realises. It has never just been whales.

This was such a bizarre, haunting, beautifully sad story about a group of whalers who find themselves stranded and falling victim to a very peculiar and unexplainable set of circumstances. It does contain a bit of imagery that’s really tough to stomach—especially if you, like myself, have a weak spot for aquatic creatures—but the scenery that Ray Cluley’s writing paints is so vivid that you can nearly feel the chill of the bitter wind and the bite of the freezing waters the Norwegians travel.

TW: explicit animal violence/death

→ A Ship of the South Wind – Bradley Denton ★★☆☆☆ ←
“We are what we are. What we are is good enough.”

Despite being a western, this story certainly struck me with stereotypical “horror” feelings; unfortunately, though, it wasn’t much of a pleasant read. Our two protagonists are a man and a boy, both half-Native, half-white, who have been essentially taken hostage by a few thieving white men. I’m going to be honest: not only did I strongly dislike the writing style behind this story (with its stilted phrasing and short, cut-off sentences), but I feel that it doesn’t fit the collection in the slightest. Its ties to the sea were slim and questionable, and left open-ended in the most unsatisfying way.

TW: slurs, racism

→ What My Mother Left Me – Alyssa Wong ★★★★★ ←
Maybe she’s calling my name. But so is something beneath the waves, that dark and lovely expanse that neither light nor human beings can touch.

A young woman takes her new girlfriend to her family beach home in hopes of finding some closure after her mother’s passing, but what she finds is much larger and more terrifying than anything she could have expected. I love Alyssa Wong’s writing so much, and as a bisexual woman, I was ecstatic enough to see a bi protagonist in this collection (because, let’s be honest, we’ve gotta get more diversity in horror!). I honestly feel like I could write a full review about this one story, because it is so flawless, and gorgeous, and devastatingly sad.

→ Broken Record – Stephen Graham Jones ★★☆☆☆ ←
Maybe a century ago you could get marooned for months or years or ever, but not in the modern world, right?

I struggled to rate or review this one, because it was so bizarre that I’m still not totally sure what to make of it. It tells the story of a man who washes up from a wreck and finds himself on a tiny desert island, where magical items slowly start appearing for him—items that he wished for as a child, in a game. The most horrific aspect of this story is the thought of actually being stranded on a desert island, all alone, with no shade or way to get home, but the novelty wears off before the installment ends, sadly.

→ Saudade – Steve Rasnic Tem ★★☆☆☆ ←
“You were in a story which worked for you for a very long time. But that story has ended, and yet you find you are still alive, and now you are in a different story you do not yet understand.”

A senior is sent on a cruise by his daughters, in a last attempt to convince him to seek companionship elsewhere after his wife has passed away, but he wants nothing to do with any of the other “cruisers”—except one. Much like several of the other stories in this collection, my frustration comes from the fact that it’s an incredibly nautical-themed tale, but very little in the way of “horror”. Besides the brief moment—a few paragraphs, truly—towards the end that featured a bit of oddity, this was just a really boring, sad recollection of an old man’s trip on a boat.

→ A Moment Before Breaking – A. C. Wise ★★★★★ ←
Maybe it’s a monster, but maybe she is, too. And all they have is each other.

A little girl and her mother are on a ship, sailing to America in hopes of a better life, when the child is taken by priests who use terrible works to trap the spirit of the Sea Prince within her body. While their intentions were to nullify the Prince by keeping him bound as such, an unlikely bond forms between the two spirits, and they set out on a path of survival and finding home. This was such a gorgeous, haunting story, full of lore and heartache and some really disturbing sea creature imagery that I loved to death. This was easily one of my most preferred stories in the anthology, and was enough to make me very curious about A.C. Wise’s other work.

→ Sister, Dearest Sister, Let Me Show You to the Sea – Seanan McGuire ★★★★★ ←
The tide goes out, leaving things like me lying stranded on the beach. It always comes back to collect us.

When a young girl’s little sister tries to murder her by leaving her to drown in the ocean, a quartet of eels make her an offer: another chance at life, for a price. Full disclosure: Seanan McGuire is one of my absolute favorite authors, and I love her work so much that I skipped past this story and saved it for last because I knew it would be my favorite, and I was right. This is the darkest, creepiest, and most fantastical story in the collection, if you ask me—and it is also gorgeous and sad and whimsical, in all the best ways. ♥

→ The Deep Sea Swell – John Langan ★★★☆☆ ←
In an odd sort of way, Susan has thought, the trip has been all about the ocean.

Susan and her husband Alan go on a winter vacation to Shetland, and take a ferry across the ocean for a leg of the trip, but when Susan is kept awake by her seasickness and anxiety, a little late night exploring leads her to meet up with a very old—and terrifying—entity in the ship. This is a bit of odd writing, as it switches tenses between past and present, but somehow, that only added to the anxiety-inducing nature of the story. While the threat itself wasn’t scary in theory, something about this story puts you right into Susan’s shoes (or fuzzy socks, I should say), and was really enjoyable, if not altogether incredibly memorable.

→ He Sings of Salt and Wormwood – Brian Hodge ★★★★★ ←
As a rule, ignorance was no virtue, but if you gave too much thought to the sea, and everything with teeth that called it home, you’d never venture out to meet it.

Danny Yukimura, a washed-up surfing pro, is practicing his free diving out in the deeps when he comes across a sunken yacht full of sea worms. Back on land, strange, carved pieces of driftwood begin washing up on shore, with faces that slowly become more and more familiar to him. I absolutely adored this story and was sad to see it end. The diving parts are so atmospheric and well described that, as someone who is afraid of being in deep water myself, I was downright claustrophobic. The slow build of dread is anxiety-inducing in the best way, and the ending is flawlessly executed.

→ Shit Happens – Michael Marshall Smith ★★★★★ ←
“I never realized the end times would smell this bad.”

Rick boards a ship planning to have a weekend of work conferencing, networking, and lots of booze—he never expected the apocalypse to happen while he was out on the water, though, and he definitely never expected it to come in such a disgusting form. This story is gross, cringe-y, hilarious, and downright amazing. It was easily the most fun story in the anthology, and it definitely reminded me of a horror-comedy film like Shaun of the Dead (especially with the goofy banter between Rick and Peter-from-London towards the end of the installment). Plus, there are a couple of political and work-related quips in the story that had me grinning from ear to ear. 10/10, would laugh (and cringe) again.

→ Haunt – Siobhan Carroll ★★★☆☆ ←
This is not the same as justice. But it has its own meaning.

The finale first reads like a simple ghost story of sailors trying to outrun spirits in the late 1700s, but with the name-dropping of massacres and accidents of the 18th century, becomes evident—and is then proven by the author’s note—that this story is less horror and more historical fiction about the sailors of this time period that joined the abolitionist movement against slavery. I love the idea behind the story and think it’s a fantastic meaning to offer, and the writing itself is lovely and fits the era very well, as far as I know. My only complaint was that it read a bit slowly and repetitive. All in all, though, it’s not a bad way to close the collection.

FINAL AVERAGE RATING: 3.53/5

Thank you to Night Shade Books for providing me with a review copy in exchange for my honest review!

Wow, I am so glad to finally be posting this review! I was lucky enough to receive an ARC pretty far in advance and devoured it immediately, because I loved Starfish so much, but I gotta tell you guys, this book? It blows Starfish out of the water. This was one of the most heartbreaking, gorgeous stories I have ever read, and there is so much diversity I could honestly yell about it forever.

“I don’t want to hold hands, or flirt, or… kiss. And I don’t feel like I’m somehow less whole because I don’t want to date.”

First, let’s go ahead and talk about the diverse representations in this book: Rumi, the narrator, is not only multiracial (Japanese, Hawaiian, and white), but she’s also questioning for the bulk of the book before tentatively coming out as both asexual and aromantic. Among the side characters, everyone is either Hawaiian, Japanese, Korean, Samoan, Filipino, black, or some combination of the above. The Hawaiian locals also primarily speak Hawaiian pidgin English, which added an incredible touch, especially after having learned that Akemi Dawn Bowman learned to speak it from her own father.

I don’t think I’ll ever find another person in the entire world who understands me the way Lea does. We’re the only two people in the universe who speak our language.

Second, you need to know that this is a book almost solely dedicated to processing grief and the loss of a loved one. If you cry at books ever, you should probably have tissues on hand. I was literally sobbing through so many chapters. I don’t have a sibling and don’t know what losing one feels like, but Rumi’s pain is so tangible. As a mother, my heart also broke so much for Rumi’s mother and the obvious struggles she was going through, especially once she was able to talk to Rumi about what had happened and how it was affecting her mental health.

Grief is a monster—not everyone gets out alive, and those who do might only survive in pieces.

Another thing Summer Bird Blue does so well is its depiction of how trauma affects our mental health, and how important it is to seek help and to not vilify those who need assistance getting through difficult times. Rumi spends much of the book determined to stay in this dark place she’s been sent to by her sister’s death, but we get to watch her learn that it’s necessary to let people in and accept help in healing. On top of that, these side characters are incredible—they all feel so three-dimensional and wonderful, and I would honestly read companion novels about at least six of them.

She’s a shell. A ghost. I think her soul climbed into the coffin with Lea. I wish mine had done the same.

One thing that I hope everyone will keep in mind while reading Summer Bird Blue as it releases, is that Rumi does come across as a very coldhearted, callous character for much of the book, but she is human and she is grieving. She has lost not only her sister and best friend in the world, but she feels abandoned by her mother as well, and everything has essentially combined to utterly break her by the time she reaches Hawaii’s shores.

Music used to be life and hope and everything happy. Now it’s full of ghosts.

I think Rumi’s characterization is a poignant reminder that grief can destroy us all in different ways, but just because we lash out doesn’t mean we are bad people—sometimes it just means we don’t have the proper tools to cope with what has happened to us. The most beautiful aspect of her negative behavior, though, is how it gives the people in her life this opportunity to show how important it is, whenever possible, to stay by her side—they don’t give up on her, but offer her their strength and support as much as they can, no differently than any of us would do for our own loved ones.

What if music doesn’t belong to me anymore, the way Lea doesn’t belong to this world?

I know I’m rambling, and this review has gone on way too long, but this book just meant so much to me and it is imperative that I express to you how badly I want to see it, and Akemi Dawn Bowman’s writing career in general, succeed in every way possible. Please, do yourself a favor: pick up a copy of this book. Pre-order it, ask your library to stock it for you, whatever works—you won’t regret it.

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to Simon Pulse for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

You can find this review and more on my blog, or you can follow me on twitter, bookstagram, or facebook!

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Buddy read with the ever lovable May!

I've been following Catana Comics for a while online, and if there is any one webcomic that so commonly perfectly depicts my relationship with my significant other, it's this one. Catana manages to draw such precious little scenes that I genuinely think almost anyone who's ever been in, or is currently in, a happy and healthy relationship can relate to, whether it's missing your significant other as soon as they leave, or the rush of happy emotions that hits when they do that one little thing they know you love, like making you coffee before you wake or bringing home burritos. ❤

Thank you to Andrews McMeel for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

#1 Vol 1 ★★★★★
#2 Vol 2 ★★★★☆

In this installment of Babyteeth, we follow Sadie and her family as Dancy leads them to what he promises is a safe place, but something is very, very wrong when they arrive.

This one definitely felt less horror and more action than the first volume, and a lot of the panels were hard to follow, just due to really simplistic panels that made it difficult to differentiate between characters. That said, I still loved the progression of their journey, as well as how tangible Sadie's love for her sweet little anti-Christ baby is. I'm super here for unconditional mommy love, even when demonic spawn are involved.

Thank you to Aftershock Comics for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Did he feel like he was one thing on the outside and something else entirely different on the inside? Does Major Tom feel that way? Does Playa? Do I? Sometimes.

I went into this book with a lot of optimistic curiosity, because it's admittedly an unusual formatting choice for a story. The book is written in 100 chapters, with 100 words per chapter - that's it. Fun fact for you: 10,000 words total, so despite being 200+ pages, this is what is called a novelette! Anyways...

What I Leave Behind follows the thought processes of a kid whose life has been flipped on its head by his father's passing, and now, the sexual assault his best friend has just been through. This is not a "point A to point B" sort of tale; instead, it's just Will's day-to-day life working in a dollar store, visiting the Chinese blessings store down the street, trying to make the world a little brighter, and many desperate, failed attempts to replicate his father's cast-iron skillet cornbread.

I really wanted to love this book, because the synopsis made me feel like it had a lot of potential, but it fell short for me, sadly. I just didn't feel like much of anything happened. It was mostly just a repetition of what was essentially the same scene over and over again: Will going to work, cracking silly jokes at his boss to make the guy's day better, and then going home to cook cornbread. The only real moments the story veered off from this pattern were his incredibly brief interactions with Superman (the homeless man who eats Will's gross cornbread failures), Playa (the aforementioned best friend), or a little boy down the street who's obsessed with butterflies.

I dunno, I mean, it's a sweet story. Will is a really good kid, and my heart went out to him a whole lot, and I loved his attempts to cheer up the people he cared about, but... I just don't feel like anything happened. It mostly felt like a social experiment - "how far can I get with this '100 words per chapter for 100 chapters' thing?"

All quotes come from an advance copy and may not match the final release. Thank you so much to Atheneum for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

You can find this review and more on my blog, or you can follow me on twitter, bookstagram, or facebook!

I tremendously appreciate the author sending me a copy of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts, but I sadly could not get into this story. I wasn't a big fan of the writing itself, and I was pretty much immediately turned off by the characters. The majority of them are very unlikable, and honestly, I'm so tired of books where the token overweight character is also the "mean" character. I'm not adding a star rating, though, since I DNFed this book too soon to feel like I could give it a very fair rating.

“Roanoke girls never last long around here. In the end, we either run or we die.”

I don’t have a lot to say about The Roanoke Girls, because I think this is one of those stories where it’s best if you go in knowing as little in advance as possible. When I picked this title up, all I knew was that it was an adult mystery fic, and that it involved a woman going back home to investigate her missing cousin. That said, I will take a moment to offer some content warnings for sexual abuse, incest, suicide, and parental neglect, so proceed with caution if those topics bother you.

This was such an incredibly disturbing, yet captivating story. It reminded me of my first time picking up a V.C. Andrews book as a kid, and being so enraptured, yet totally disgusted from start to finish. You learn very quickly that there is some incest and child grooming going on in the family, and things just snowball onward from there. The chapters alternate timelines between Lane’s teen and adult years, which is done flawlessly and makes the story pass incredibly quickly.

I enjoyed Lane tremendously as a narrator; despite making poor decisions, her behavior is constantly being addressed as the result of her childhood traumas. She acknowledges the need to change and better herself, which made her feel very three-dimensional to me. There is so much insight given to the politics of an incestuous family and the bizarre ways that loved ones can harm one another, and while it was a tough read at times, I couldn’t put it down. My only regret is letting it sit on my shelf so long before I dove into it.

Thank you to Blogging For Books for sending me a review copy! All opinions here are entirely my own.

Let me preface this by saying I wanted to love this book, so badly. It was one of my most anticipated releases of the year. I requested an ARC so many times before finally being able to trade for a copy on twitter! I hoped I would be writing a rave review to tell you guys that this was morbid and gross and creepy and so much fun. Sadly, instead, you get... this review.

Before the birthday balloons, and before the accident, before the broken mirrors and the black veins and the dismembered bodies in the basement, there was only the Cane sisters.

Sounds kinda spoilery, eh? Nah. That's literally the first line in the book - which made it seem like it was off to a killer start, but unfortunately, was just foreshadowing for what would ultimately become my first problem with this book: it spoils itself. If you've read the synopsis or the blurbs on the dust jacket, congratulations, you already know how it ends.

If there had been any mystery left to the plot, I think this book would have felt so different - and so much better. There is literally one twist in the plot that is kept a "secret", but it's so painfully obvious that I can't even count it as a legitimate twist.

Loyalty is everything when it came to family, Mona believed. It didn't matter what they do or put you through: at the end of the day, they were the only family you had.

Easily the most infuriating thing about The Ravenous was Mona's family, who made me want to scream at least once per chapter. I get that it was intentional, and that we were supposed to hate everyone except Mona and Rose (and maybe one other sister), but everything was so over the top - particularly with the incredibly abusive eldest sister, Juliet - that it went far beyond hating the characters, straight into the zone of considering DNFing the book just so I wouldn't have to read about them anymore.

The second worst part of this book was, funny enough, something I'm actually not taking points off for: the horrible grammar and writing. My copy is an ARC, so I'm hoping and assuming the finished copy was cleaned up substantially, but my word, the run-on sentences and random tense changes were terrible! Some of the phrasing itself just felt... well, I hate to say lazy but here's an example:

When she did, she saw that Anya was sitting near the top of the stairs, hugging her knees to her chest while Juliet said a bunch of bullshit to try and get them to open the door.

"A bunch of bullshit"? Show me, don't tell me. What did she say? I mean, come on. God, I feel awful about the direction this review is taking, but rereading through the places I tabbed is just making me want to knock this down to 1 star and forget about it, but I'm TRYING HERE.

I don't know. The plot is vaguely fun, but mostly incredibly boring, and barely anything happens. None of the characters are enjoyable and the entire story is spoiled in the blurb. If you exceptionally like zombie stories, maybe pick this one up, but otherwise, I can't say I'd recommend The Ravenous to anyone. I'm told that Amy's other books are exponentially better, so maybe I'll give her another try once I've stopped being so bummed out about this release.

P.S. One final thing: I'm all for swearing in books, but when you literally use "fuck" in every other sentence for pages on end, I stop paying attention to the plot and start counting "fuck"s. Sorry.

Content warnings: violence, familial abuse (emotional/verbal/physical/mental), parental neglect, alcoholism, ableism (RE: depression - unchallenged), child death, fat-shaming, cannibalism.

All quotes are taken from the ARC and may have been changed before final publication.

You can find this review and more on my blog!