The cover of this book is what caught my eye as well as the description. As much as it pains me to say I was unable to finish this book. This isn’t a reflection on the author or the book itself as there are going to be many readers who will love this story. The prologue was amazing and I was drawn in and wanted to know more; however, the story wasn’t moving fast enough for my particular attention span. By the time I hit chapter 4 I was still confused by what was going on and rather than getting answers I was getting more and more confused. As previously mentioned there will be many readers who will enjoy this level of mystery and darkness it just ended up not being for me.

*Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the advanced reader copy.

Not so much review as notes:

This book feels like a good effort that needs a bit of experience. It lives way too much in its influences, and the desired gothic vibe gets bogged down in details. I did appreciate the exploration of siblings and the weight of family.

Too obvious, which makes it extra annoying when it's slow. Falls into the unfortunate trap of the narrator having to notice things to tell the reader, but then disregarding them. That's very hard to read. Imagine coming to an important realization that scares you, about the people around you, and then just deciding to have a bath because it's been a long day.

The metaphor of selves and true natures is pretty clunky.

I got the point early on and it was a slog to finish and see if anything unexpected developed. I guess what developed was... some homophobia, some plot holes, and unaddressed consent issues. Cool. I've been writing this review as I go and in the end I found this just frustrating and poorly written. Listen, I read some YA in middle school that wasn't well written, and I enjoyed it, so I guess I just should let the newer ones go. ( )

4.25/5 ( )

Audiobook DNF at 18%. A great cover, and intriguing premise, but the book itself just fell flat for me. When you find yourself rolling your eyes at the character reactions, that's not a good sign... ( )

This book was originally going to be get three stars as it started off fairly interesting with potential and I was completely here for the monster family, however mid way through it was ruined for me. There wasn’t much of a plot?? Most of the book was family drama until Grandmere sauntered into the scene. And I’m sorry the main character was so dumb. Her grandmother tells her to watch over the family and she assumes that this suddenly means she’s in charge of everything?? How did she jump to this conclusion?? And then her grandmother also says not to let anyone else in the house and what does she do? Immediately has her other grandmother over and doesn’t think that this might at all be a problem even after all of her other family members repeatedly being scared/not liking her. And don’t even get me started on the weirdness that is her relationship with Arthur.
This book had potential and did well with setting up a dark atmosphere with the descriptions of the house and family in the beginning but otherwise failed in execution. ( )