Super creepy and strange, I'm not sure I'd recommend it to people that don't like reading strange stuff.

| BOOK REVIEW |

Title: Follow Me To Ground
Author: Sue Rainsford
Format: 🎧 (Originally received an ARC from @scribnerbooks)
Rating: ✩ ✩ ✩

Important things to know about Follow Me To Ground: it's weird, it's quirky, it has eerie and disturbing vibes at times, and it doesn't answer your questions. If you're okay with that, you may really love this one. I was torn. The ending was really right down my alley, but I wasn't sure about everything leading up to that.


It's hard to feel a connection with any of the characters in this novel: Ada and her father are non-human beings, and you're not really quite sure what to make of Samson and his sister Olivia. So, for me, the story up until the last third is a little hard to connect and relate to.


The writing was spare and haunting, which really matched the novel, and mimicked those vibes you get throughout. That does leave you as a reader to fill in more of what's happening around you, but that's a lot of what the novel does at the end. In the middle, I honestly wasn't sure if I was in love with the story, but the ending was a bonus for me because I love those open-endings.


I love a good novel that leads you with questions, and this one certainly did that. At the end, I really wanted just a tinyyyy bit more just to confirm what I think was happening, but wasn't positive on.

Key Points:
• Magical realism/horror
• Toxic romance
• Weird fiction

Super creepy. Super strange. A mix between a fairy tale and a nightmare. Or I guess a Grimm’s Fairytale. I’m not sure how else to review this book, but I really enjoyed it. Entirely unlike anything I’ve read recently.

There was a ton about this book that I didn't get - but I actually liked that about it! Rainsford's writing is so uniquely strange and disturbing that this felt very different from most books I've read.

This short novel (I read it super fast) is about a young woman who's not really human who has abilities to heal people. She falls in love with the wrong guy (common trope) but the lengths she goes to in order to keep him in her life are cuckoo. The story is a wild mix of horror and fantasy - wholly weird and indescribable most of the time.

The only downfall for me is that there were some things that I did feel needed a tad bit more resolution. I had way too many questions at the end of the book. I loved that there was so much mystery surrounding the characters but I wanted there to be a bit more clarity about a few aspects so I didn't feel as though I was dumb for not understanding everything.

I wouldn't recommend this to everyone (it's definitely on the creepy side), but I enjoyed it as a book that allowed me to expand my imagination in a major way.

I adored this – the writing, the storyline, the absolute bonkers weirdness, and most of all the wonderful main character. This book is super weird and the prose is flowery enough to sometimes hide what is going on, to really, really work for me. It is also a deeply disturbing book, both in the central imagery of a ground that needs to be fed and of healers opening up their patients and then putting them into the earth to heal and in the casual horror of the main character’s relationship – a horror that Rainsford does not explicate but makes very very obvious nonetheless.

Follow Me to Ground has to be one of the strangest books I have ever read... but I loved it. The author's writing was beautiful, and the story was so different. Once I started it, I read it every second I had a chance until it was done. And the ending blew me away! What a great read!

What a weird, weird little book. It's not one I'd recommend to everyone, and probably not even to most people, but I don't regret my reading experince. If you like things strange, it's best to go into this one blind. If like things visceral, fantastical, with a bit of gore, give Follow Me to Ground a try. 3.5/5.

Dnf - did not finish. I did not connect with the writing style of this novel. I will not be finishing it. Thank you publisher and netgalley for the early copy!

I received an ARC from @scribnerbooks via @netgalley of this strange little book!
.
A little bit weird, a little bit disturbing, I could NOT put it down. The writing was beautiful. If you dig magical realism and things that are a bit dark and weird, then you’ll dig this.

FOLLOW ME TO THE GROUND is so outside the realm of what I usually read, and I did not quite know what to expect. But I'm so grateful I gave it a chance, as I truly loved reading something so much different than my usual genre.

Weird little book. Didn’t really enjoy this so I will not be reviewing publicly. I have so many questions.

**Thank you Netgalley and publisher for giving me an electronic ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**

This was a very confusing book, it was a good type of confusing. I felt grossed out by the imagery with the descriptions but it worked with the setting.

An Unsettling Coming of Age Story, with Squishy Parts

I admit that reviewing a book by referring to other books seems to be a lazy shortcut. But "Follow Me to Ground" is so disorienting that if you tried to really explain why you enjoyed it you'd end up writing your own novella. Since "Follow Me..." is mostly metaphorical, allegorical, and mythical anyway, maybe making comparisons to other books is the only way to go.

So, the way I see it, if William Faulkner and Shirley Jackson had used a copy of "Gray's Anatomy" to write a feminist horror teenage love story you'd get something like this, only not as good.

Or to put it differently - consider a drinking game where you imbibe every time the author makes a metaphor for the female body into a literal description, object, condition, or act. This book would get you blotto pretty quickly.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

A srangely beautiful. yet gory tale of a father and daughter from the ground that have the power to open up and cure the townspeople (called cures) but removing what is wrong and placing them in the ground to heal. A very short story, can be read in a sitting. Slightly confusing, but that's just part of its mysteriousness.

Well this was a scary one I wasn’t expecting! Follow Me To Ground was one twisted nightmare that followed two non-humans, as mystic healers.

It was such a unique storyline and I really enjoyed it! I have always loved a weird and twisty story, and would definitely recommend this one to those looking for something to mix things up.

Thank you Netgalley and Scribner for the free copy. All opinions are my own

This book was so surreal and disturbing. I really enjoyed the descriptive writing style, but I find myself at a loss at how else to describe this book, that's how unique it was! It was totally twisted and endlessly bizarre. It feels weird to say that I enjoyed a book like this one, because of its twisted nature, but I did!

Follow Me to Ground is a book that kind of defies characterization. Its literary. It's eerie. It's strange. There's no question that it is captivating in its own way, but it also has a borderline obsession with sex and dark imagery. I will look forward to seeing what Rainsford does next.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

Well, that was bizarre. I’ve never read a book quite like this. I appreciated what the author did here and I admire her craft. However, I didn’t really “get it”. The big reveal seemed obvious at the beginning of the book, the ending was vague, and I didn’t understand the meaning of it all.

This was an odd book, one that left me feeling very unsettled and uncomfortable. Ada and her father are healers, but not healers in the traditional sense. They come from the ground, the earth, and the way that they heal is by using that ground to make people whole again by burying them in it for as long as prescribed. This was not an enjoyable read, but an interesting one.

Gorgeous and mesmerizing, Follow Me To Ground is a short book that packs a hell of a punch.
Although the story's setting is never stated, it reads to me like central or southern Appalachia, as seen through a lens somewhere between Weird Fiction and Magical Realism.

I tore through this book, and then had to think about it for a long time. One's own immediate reactions cannot be trusted here, with characters and motivations so complex that they require deeper reflection. Is Ada good, bad, or neither? Is she a reliable narrator? Beyond the pure enjoyment of its great writing, I don't think any two readers will have the same experience of this book -- and that is a beautiful thing.