Review: Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall

Links with an asterisk (*) are Ad: Affiliate Links, which means if you make a purchase through them, I'll make a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall

Published: 3rd October 2019 | Publisher: Walker Books | Source: Bought
Kate Alice Marshall’s Website

Once a year, a road appears in the woods at midnight and the ghost of Lucy Gallows beckons, inviting those who are brave enough to play her game. If you win, you escape with you life. But if you lose...

It's almost a year since Becca went missing. Everyone else has given up searching for her, but her sister, Sara, knows she disappeared while looking for Lucy Gallows. Determined to find her, Sara and her closest friends enter the woods. But something more sinister than ghosts lurks on the road, and not everyone will survive. From the blurb.

Purchase from Bookshop.org*
The StoryGraph | Goodreads

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features vomit, casual joke about someone's stutter (challenge), casual joke about a missing person (challenged), casual joke about suicide (challenged), casual joke about drug addiction, mention of suicide attempt, child abuse - violence, almost drowning, and a stabbing.

Continue reading Review: Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall

Review: The Girls are Never Gone by Sarah Glenn Marsh

Links with an asterisk (*) are Ad: Affiliate Links, which means if you make a purchase through them, I'll make a small commission at no extra cost to you.

The Girls are Never Gone by Sarah Glenn Marsh

Published: 7th September 2021 | Publisher: Razorbill | Source: Bought
Sarah Glenn Marsh’s Website

Dare Chase doesn’t believe in ghosts.

Privately, she’s a supernatural skeptic. But publicly, she’s keeping her doubts to herself—because she’s the voice of Attachments, her brand-new paranormal investigation podcast, and she needs her ghost-loving listeners to tune in.

That’s what brings her to Arrington Estate. Thirty years ago, teenager Atheleen Bell drowned in Arrington’s lake, and legend says her spirit haunts the estate. Dare’s more interested in the suspicious circumstances surrounding her death—circumstances that she believes point to a living culprit, not the supernatural. Still, she’s vowed to keep an open mind as she investigates, even if she’s pretty sure what she’ll find.

But Arrington is full of surprises. Good ones like Quinn, the cute daughter of the house’s new owner. And baffling ones like the threatening messages left scrawled in paint on Quinn’s walls, the ghastly face that appears behind Dare’s own in the mirror, and the unnatural current that nearly drowns their friend Holly in the lake. As Dare is drawn deeper into the mysteries of Arrington, she’ll have to rethink the boundaries of what is possible. Because if something is lurking in the lake... it might not be willing to let her go. From The StoryGraph.

Purchase from Bookshop.org*
The StoryGraph | Goodreads

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features vomite, and almost drowning.

Continue reading Review: The Girls are Never Gone by Sarah Glenn Marsh

Review: Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain (#Ad)

I received this eProof for free from Electric Monkey via NetGalley for the purposes of providing an honest review.

Links with an asterisk (*) are Ad: Affiliate Links, which means if you make a purchase through them, I'll make a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain

Published: 2nd September 2021 | Publisher: Electric Monkey | Source: NetGalley
Ginny Myers Sain’s Website

La Cachette, Louisiana, is the worst place to be if you have something to hide.

This tiny town, where seventeen-year-old Grey spends her summers, is the self-proclaimed Psychic Capital of the World--and the place where Elora Pellerin, Grey's best friend, disappeared six months earlier.

Grey can't believe that Elora vanished into thin air any more than she can believe that nobody in a town full of psychics knows what happened. But as she digs into the night that Elora went missing, she begins to realize that everybody in town is hiding something--her grandmother Honey; her childhood crush Hart; and even her late mother, whose secrets continue to call to Grey from beyond the grave.

When a mysterious stranger emerges from the bayou--a stormy-eyed boy with links to Elora and the town's bloody history--Grey realizes that La Cachette's past is far more present and dangerous than she'd ever understood. Suddenly, she doesn't know who she can trust. In a town where secrets lurk just below the surface, and where a murderer is on the loose, nobody can be presumed innocent--and La Cachette's dark and shallow lies may just rip the town apart. From Goodreads.

Purchase from Bookshop.org*
The StoryGraph | Goodreads

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features vomit, blood, self-harm, suicide ideation, domestic abuse, gun violence, arson, almost drowning, and infanticide.

Continue reading Review: Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain (#Ad)

Review: The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould

The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould

Published: 3rd August 2021 | Publisher: Wednesday Books | Source: Bought
Courtney Gould’s Website

Courtney Gould's thrilling YA debut The Dead and the Dark is about the things that lurk in dark corners, the parts of you that can't remain hidden, and about finding home in places--and people--you didn't expect.

The Dark has been waiting for far too long, and it won't stay hidden any longer.

Something is wrong in Snakebite, Oregon. Teenagers are disappearing, some turning up dead, the weather isn't normal, and all fingers seem to point to TV's most popular ghost hunters who have just returned to town. Logan Ortiz-Woodley, daughter of TV's ParaSpectors, has never been to Snakebite before, but the moment she and her dads arrive, she starts to get the feeling that there's more secrets buried here than they originally let on.

Ashley Barton's boyfriend was the first teen to go missing, and she's felt his presence ever since. But now that the Ortiz-Woodleys are in town, his ghost is following her and the only person Ashley can trust is the mysterious Logan. When Ashley and Logan team up to figure out who--or what--is haunting Snakebite, their investigation reveals truths about the town, their families, and themselves that neither of them are ready for. As the danger intensifies, they realize that their growing feelings for each other could be a light in the darkness. From The StoryGraph.

The StoryGraph | Goodreads

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features claustrophobia/dreams of being buried alive, homophobia, attempted drowning, gun violence, strangulation, and child death.

Continue reading Review: The Dead and the Dark by Courtney Gould

Review: Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

Links with an asterisk (*) are Ad: Affiliate Links, which means if you make a purchase through them, I'll make a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

Published: 24th March 2021 | Publisher: The Borough Press | Source: Bought
Emily M. Danforth’s Website

1902, Brookhants School for Girls: students Flo and Clara are madly in love with each other, as well as completely obsessed with The Story of Mary MacLane, the scandalous debut memoir by 19 year old MacLane. A few months later they are found dead in the woods, after a horrific wasp attack, the book lying next to their intertwined bodies. Within five years the school is closed. But not before three more people die on the property, each in a troubling way.

Over a hundred years later, Brookhants opens its doors once more, when a crew of young actresses arrive to film a high-profile movie about the rumoured Brookhants curse. And as past and present become grimly entangled, it’s soon impossible to tell quite where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins... From The StoryGraph.

Purchase from Bookshop.org*
The StoryGraph | Goodreads

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features vomit, a fire, use of both soft and hard drugs, alcoholism, mention of suicide, a mental asylum, abuse of a patient, and attempted rape.

Continue reading Review: Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

Ad: Titles with an asterisk (*) were provided to me for free by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Links with a circumflex (^) are Ad: Affiliate Links, which means if you make a purchase through them, I'll make a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Sapphic YA for Halloween

October starts tomorrow, and Halloween is just around the corner, so everyone will start putting together their TBRs for the month of all things spooky! So I thought I'd help you along with a list of sapphic YA horror and supernatural reads perfect for this time of year.

Perfectly Preventable Deaths by Deirdre Sullivan

Everyone in Ballyfran has a secret, and that is what binds them together...

Fifteen-year-old twins Madeline and Catlin move to a new life in Ballyfran, a strange isolated town, a place where, for the last sixty years, teenage girls have gone missing in the surrounding mountains.

As distance grows between the twins - as Catlin falls in love, and Madeline begins to understand her own nascent witchcraft - Madeline discovers that Ballyfrann is a place full of predators. Not only foxes, owls and crows, but also supernatural beings who for many generations have congregated here to escape persecution. When Catlin falls into the gravest danger of all, Madeline must ask herself who she really is, and who she wants to be - or rather, who she might have to become to save her sister.

Dark and otherworldly, this is an enthralling story about the bond between sisters and the sacrifices we make for those we care about the most. From StoryGraph.

Bookshop^ | StoryGraph | Goodreads

Continue reading Sapphic YA for Halloween

Review: Medusa by Jessie Burton

I was sent this proof for free by Bloomsbury for the purposes of providing an honest review.

Links with an asterisk (*) are Ad: Affiliate Links, which means if you make a purchase through them, I'll make a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Medusa by Jessie Burton

Published: 28th October 2021 | Publisher: Bloomsbury Children's Books | Source: Publisher
Jessie Burton's Website

A dazzling, feminist retelling of Greek myth from the internationally bestselling author of The Miniaturist, stunningly illustrated by Olivia Lomenech Gill.

Exiled to a far-flung island by the whims of the gods, Medusa has little company except the snakes that adorn her head instead of hair. But when a charmed, beautiful boy called Perseus arrives on the island, her lonely existence is disrupted with the force of a supernova, unleashing desire, love, betrayal, and destiny itself.

Filled with glorious full-colour illustrations by award-winning Olivia Lomenech Gill, this astonishing retelling of Greek myth is perfect for readers of Circe and The Silence of the Girls. Illuminating the girl behind the legend, it brings alive Medusa for a new generation. From Goodreads.

Purchase from Bookshop.org*
The StoryGraph | Goodreads

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features rape and rape culture.

Continue reading Review: Medusa by Jessie Burton