Disclaimer: I received this book from Netgally for review purposes.

I...have no idea how I feel about this book. It yo-yoed so much for me. At times I loved it, other times I hated it, and then I was just sort of confused. It felt like at times it was building up to be a sequel because there felt like there was so much left to explore and explain but then it just sort of seems to end.

I enjoyed the first half of this book a lot, it felt like it was going somewhere but it just never really got there. I'd love to read more by this author - the YA element felt perfect, just the supernatural stuff felt a little flat to me.

Overall I didn't dislike it. Id give it a try for others who are curious.

I think with a little more care and effort, this book could have been super great! But as is, the writing felt clunky.

I unfortunately didn't finish this book. I wasn't clicking with the writing style or the characters. It had a lot of potential to be something I would enjoy but fell flat.

3.5 stars. An eerie, strange, morbid book about adolescent girls running from and toward death.
[I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.]

Gothic tale filled with magical realism, spooky elements, witchy neighbours, and ghostly appearances. However, the writing and story wasn't my jam.

I really liked this book and how twisted it was because it kept my attention. A good book about grieving and accepting death while still living yourself.

I gave this a three out of five stars. This book wasn't anything I was expecting, it was dark and depressing. I was expecting it to be a witchy read by the cover. It was a decent read though but it wasn't anything I expected at all.

Thank you to netgalley for sending me an arc of this book. I loved this book. I went in thinking it would be about one thing after hearing reviews but I was wrong. The storyline was mush better than want I originally thought it would be. Adding to my "to purchase list".

This book is very interesting, don’t get me wrong. And the cover is what drew me in. However, I wasn’t prepared for the content and the underlying tones. I had to DNF this one. Will give it three stars for the cover, the writing, and the little not of friendship that I saw forming.

I'm just going to be honest.

There's lots of unlikeable characters and the plot is so underdeveloped. I really anticipated more on the death row letters, but max there's 15 pages on it and that just makes the payoff quite low. The synopsis promises and the book doesn't give.

“‘My heart has never been so full and so empty at the same time. I didn’t know the human heart could do that, but it can. It can hold two things at once, like two hands.’”

I received a free e-copy through NetGalley from the publishers at Albert Whitman & Company. Trigger warnings: death/child death, suicide attempt, drowning, addiction, overdose, (underage) drug/alcohol abuse, grief, threats, hospitals.

When Olivia’s little brother drowned in their backyard pool three years ago, her world stopped. Her father stays late every night at work, and her mother has descended into a haze of prescription drugs. It isn’t until the Hallas women move in across the street that things change. Kara is the first person to attempt to draw Olivia back into the world of the living. She has a strange hobby of writing letters to men on death row, and Olivia joins her. They call themselves the Resurrection Girls. But the Hallas women are not as they appear, and a shadow looms over Kara, her mother, and her grandmother–a shadow that Olivia knows all too well.

This is a strange and enjoyable novel, and while I didn’t love it, I’ve never read anything else quite like it either, and I’m prone to recommending books on that alone. Its strongest aspect is the unflinching way that it looks at grief after the death of a child and how each of Olivia’s family members deals (or fails to deal) with that loss. It’s difficult to read about characters who are in so much pain, so if you know that isn’t for you, it’s better to pass on this book. Their grief is the theme at the heart of the novel, the rest of the plot merely orbiting around it.

And that may be the main issue with Resurrection Girls: the rest of the plot feels like an afterthought. The Hallas women remind me a little of the Hempstocks in a Neil Gaiman book; they’re probably witches, but you can only tell if you’re looking at them sideways. The magical aspect of the novel is interesting–maybe more interesting than anything else that’s happening–but it’s under-developed. By the time it comes into play near the end of the book, there’s too much weirdness in too short a time without enough explanation. But then, some readers like questions unanswered. I’m even one of them at times, but I wanted I little more to go on earlier in the novel and a little more development of the supernatural aspects at the end. The two sides never quite come together as well as they could.

The characters are fine. Olivia is largely characterized by grief, both hers and her parents’. Lacking other coping mechanisms, she often turns to drugs or sneaking her mom’s pills. Her character development overall is good, though, in facing her role in her brother’s death and getting her family members to do the same. I enjoy stories about toxic girl friendships, but Kara is a shadow compared to others of her kind, the Alaska Youngs and Astrid Thorntons of YA fiction. It’s never really clear what sets her apart from other rebellious teenagers, and the magical charisma she has works better on the characters than the reader. (There’s also a fairly pointless love triangle, if that’s a red flag for anyone.) All things considered, it’s a fine debut novel. I wouldn’t have reservations about picking up another of Morgyn’s books to see how her talent develops.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.

Not exactly what I had expected but I did enjoy it for what it was. Not always thought-provoking, but I was a decent read.

A thoughtful meditation on the destructive power of "breached" grief with a strong dose of magical realism (of a distinctly Greco-Roman bent).

I feel like a lot of the middling reviews I'm seeing for Resurrection Girls (on Goodreads, anyway) are largely due to perceived misdirection by the blurb/cover, and, while I can see that (the blurb does market this more as a paranormal thriller than a magical realist meditation on the nature of grief), I was not at all disappointed and enjoyed Resurrection Girls even more than I thought I would.

Resurrection Girls is buoyed by its strong prose and unflinching depictions of a family suspended by grieving the loss of a child (and, for those, I recommend it), but its plot is a bit muddled. I particularly would have liked to learn a bit more about the Hallas women -- or, at least, have the elements of the fantastic haunting the edges of the story be handled a little more elegantly in the final third of the book when the plot starts to go a little off the rails and many of the most interesting elements of the plot are either hastily "resolved," used for quick and easy catalysts, or don't actually tie together in a significant way. That said, however, Resurrection Girls remains a strange, beautiful little book that I expect is going to sit with me for a while.

Thank you to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Now with a title like Resurrection Girls, one would think that there would be supernatural elements within the book. The problem is that the book started out with realism, but had only hints to magical realism. Then towards the last chapters, it went all-out fantasy, so that was extremely out of place and jarring. Not my fave read at all.

This book was not really what I was expecting it to be, but I still had a good time with it. I think I'm a little out of the age range for this one, but it's definitely worth the read!

Hm. This is a tough one as the cover definitely drew me in to a gothic story to read around Halloween, but instead what I got was a contemporary dashed with magical realism for the majority, and then just an onslaught of fantasy by the end. I found it difficult to stay interested as I had forgotten what had happened not 30 pages ago. I also found it difficult to connect with any of the characters and found most of the main plot boring and predictable.

It took me so long to finish this book that I'd forgotten the beginning by the end. Perhaps that's on my part, but I just found that this book was so utterly dull and predictable at times that I was completely checked out of the story.

2.5 stars. Although I didn’t like this book overall, there were parts I enjoyed quite a bit. I enjoyed Olivia as a character and I appreciated how this story handled the topic of grief. The “magical realism” parts of this book were not done well; they felt like an after thought to fill in gaps or excuses for certain behavior. Kara as a character was interesting in the beginning, but felt like a John Green love interest by the end. Prescott was simply a plot device and that was annoying; he did not contribute much to the story but had he been introduced and worked in differently he might have been a good character. This book has a really intriguing premise but a not so great execution, but I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to read it.

3.75 Stars

I received an eARC of this book via Netgalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review.
Full disclosure - I did some research on the author afterward and I'm trying my best not to let that research cloud my judgment of the book itself.

Characters *** I wasn't the biggest fan of Kara, but I get why she is the way she is. I do like Olivia and her journey throughout the novel.

Cover **** I mean come oooooon, there's a skeleton hand! How could I not love it?!?!

Pace **** I felt like this moved pretty well. I read it fairly quickly over a couple of free evenings.

Plot *** Ok here's where it gets a bit sticky. There are some amazing parts to this. The view of grief and loss and how it affects people differently and what death can mean for those left behind. It was just, so hauntingly, beautifully done. But the paranormal aspects were just off a bit.

Writing **** I love the way Morgyn weaved her words together. Again, just hauntingly beautiful.

It wasn't the pills she was addicted to. It was the grief, the simultaneous struggle to clutch her pain to her chest as she once had my brother and to push it as far away as possible, as though by gaining distance from his loss she could make it less real.


Enjoyment **** While there were parts of this that I was just like "What the actual F*** is happening right now" I enjoyed it as a whole.

Cry * I sobbed. But that was more from the research portion but I'm giving Morgyn the point anyway because I think she deserves it

4 stars⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"𝓘𝓽’𝓼 𝓷𝓸 𝓵𝓸𝓷𝓰𝓮𝓻 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓵𝓸𝓼𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓹𝓮𝓻𝓼𝓸𝓷 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓶𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓷, 𝓫𝓾𝓽 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓵𝓸𝓼𝓼 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓱𝓪𝓾𝓷𝓽. 𝓐𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓪𝓫𝓼𝓮𝓷𝓬𝓮 𝓲𝓼 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓲𝓼 𝓵𝓮𝓯𝓽 𝔀𝓱𝓮𝓷 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓱 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝔂𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓹𝓪𝓲𝓷."

⏳𝐓𝐋;𝐃𝐑:⏳
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐬: Sixteen year old Olivia's life hasn't felt the same since her little brother drowned in the pool three years ago. Her mother and father are each dealing with the grief in their own, destructive ways. When Kara moves in across the street with her mother and grandmother, Olivia quickly realizes that the family is a little different, but she could never guess just how much.
𝐏𝐥𝐨𝐭: Character-driven, doses of magical realism, grief-centric
𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: Lyrical without being flowery, un-put-down-able
𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬: Imperfect, a little complicated, but realistic


👍𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐬:👍
-Easy and fast read
-Interesting concept to imbue a story hinged on grief and death with elements of magical realism
-Simple, beautiful, and un-putdownable prose
-Great investigation of grief and tragedy

👎𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬:👍
-There were hints of the magical realism throughout but the end suddenly just opened up the floodgates on it and it felt very jarring
-Kara serves as a bit of a manic-pixie-dream-girl character

𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘦𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘥𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸.