I tried but I lost interest in this - I just didn't particularly like or relate to any of the characters. So not for me!

I was given an ARC in exchange for an honest review. I had been waiting for this book to come out and was not disappointed at all. Christina Henry has once again bought forth a magical spooky reality which pulls you in from the very first chapter. I would say this is a huge step above the last (Alice Novellas) and breaths life into a sometimes forgotten legend.... Sleepy Hollow.

<b>4.0 Stars - Female Coming of Age Horror</b>
Finally! This is the story I have been searching for… a female centric coming of age horror story. I’ve read other horror advertised as such, but this is the first one to actually deliver the goods. Told over multiple perspectives, the story primarily centers around two teenagers who are transitioning from girls into young women. The story touches on common female experiences from choosing boys over best friends to the uncomfortable experience of starting one’s period. Both girls were likeable and well developed with understandable motivations.

Overall, this was an incredibly immersive story that pulled me right from the start. It’s a fairly long novel, but it never felt slow. The story was perfectly paced with a compulsive narrative that kept me turning the pages. The plot was honestly quite predictable, but I did not mind at all. Instead, I found the familiar horror tropes to be comforting. The actual writing was quite simplistic, but the story itself made up for those weaknesses.

With the younger protagonists, this horror novel has a lot of YA crossover appeal. I also think it would be a great starting place for someone newer to horror, because it felt quite accessible without a lot of the weirdness that turns people off the genre. This book will also appeal to those who loved Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chobsky because it had a similar narrative style.

I would highly recommend this novel to any horror reader who enjoys classic horror narratives with some fantastical supernatural elements.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Creepy and entertaining!
Sleepy Hollow meets Sabrina the Teenage Witch

It’s 1985 in Smiths Hollow, a small town just outside of Chicago. A nice, quiet place where crime doesn’t exist, and jobs are plentiful. Until one summer day, the bodies of two teenage girls are found torn apart in a neighbor’s backyard. 15 year old Lauren starts seeing visions of the monster who did this, and discovers her family were descendants of witches. Told from multiple POV’s, the townspeople unravel a mystery that has been lingering in Smiths Hollow for decades.

I loved the 80’s references, and the nostalgic/coming-of-age feel. Lots of interesting characters, David and Alex were my favorites. This would be a fun TV series for Netflix or Hulu to pick up.

OMG! The witchy powers, haunted woods concept always my favorite themes and when I dive into a book which reminds me of Shea Ernshaw’s Wicked Deep meets Emily Lloyd Jones’ Bone Houses and Stephen Kong’s epic book Outsider with Sleepy Hollow vibes, I may only scream “yess” and fill my brain with the marvelous taste of literature and feel the tingling shiver of thrilling sense on my shoulders.

This book is captivating, exciting page turner, attracting your attention and hooks your soul from the first page. You cannot put it down. You have to cancel everything in your life to focus on your reading which you already get used to do in your new normal state( Sometimes I wish I don’t read any news and deal with new realities of our changing Pandemic universe by burying my head into a book and keep on reading till everything goes back to normal. At least this kind of great books give you the great escape opportunity you terribly need right now!)

So let’s take a look at the synopsis:

Welcome to Smith Hollows. A secluded town with the people suffer from short term memory loss about the murders occur there. They look like daytime sleepwalkers when somebody opens his mouth to ask questions what is going on there.

Is there something sinister in the woods to tear the bones apart of the young girls? They lately find two girls’s brutally murdered pieces at the front yard of a racist old bigot lady but new police officer Alex Lopez who moved with his family from Chicago realizes the murders occurred in the woods and somebody carried the pieces of the corpses to the backyard of his racist neighbor who thinks Mexican people already cursed the place with their existence and they may be connected with the killings.

In the meantime Lauren, 15 years old, recently lost her father who was brutally killed in the woods just like two girls feels a painful headache and sees visions about how the girls get killed. And she realizes there is something supernatural about the killings of those girls.

And her four year old brother David reminds us of the combination of eerie, weird kids in the standard horror movies, tells to their mother his premonition about murders( he will keep telling weird prophecies during the book which will come true) And as soon as Lauren talks with her Nana, she learns the ugly secret about their family ancestors, her mind gets more confused and her new normal reality gets more distorted. Could the things her Nana tell be true?

Even though the identity of the killer was so foreseeable from the beginning and reading so many POVs included into the story may be confusing : instead of Lauren, her best friend Miranda, we read Karen, Alex, racist neighbor ( I don’t want to mention her name because from the beginning I hate the guts of the character), Riley (Journalist from Chicago), Touhy ( interestingly Ben Mendelsohn’s face appeared on my mind when I read the chapters about him), I liked the incredibly capturing pacing, 80’s vibes with Goonies, Jackson songs, punk rock, Stallone, Stephen King book references including Firestarter and of course the rabbit references in the book reminds us of the author’s Alice series.

Overall: I’m so open to read a sequel. Lauren, David and Alejandro( Alex)are my favorite characters. I liked the moving, mind numbing, exhilarating chapters.

I highly recommend it to the genre lovers and Christina Henry fans!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for this addictive ARC with me in exchange my honest opinions. I had really enjoyable time!