I really enjoyed the first half to two thirds of Whiteland. Unfortunately, it would up losing me in the last bit.

It starts out creepy and intriguing but it ended up so slow that it was hard to want to finish. The beginning was almost disjointed and manic but I think that helped with the vibe and understanding the characters mental state. Eventually it started to get repetitive and didn't hold the creepiness from the beginning.

There was a lot of potential but it didn't his the mark for me.

I loved the first 60% of this book. It started off in a creepy fantasy and moves into horror.

Romy disappears into the Swiss forest in the middle of the night. She is brought back after a night in the snow in only her nightgown. She shouldn't be alive. And she isn't herself.

What follows is a folktale that involves a haunted forest and succubi. Sounds great, right? Her sister is drawn into the search for the truth of what happened.

It gets a little repetitive as she and Callum, the local who found Romy, go into the forest to investigate.

Unfortunately, once you really seem to know what is happening, it starts to go a little slowly. The ending left me wanting something I didn't get. Something I felt I was promised in the beginning.

I gave this a three out of five stars. I really enjoyed this story, I liked the main character and the love interest. I liked the story line as well.

I really didn’t like this book. I tried to like it. I had to put this one down early on. I just couldn’t get into it. It wasn’t for me at all

Enjoyed this book. First time reading Rosie Cranie-Higgs. Kind of miss of genres, with great characters and story. Can't wait to read the next in the series. #Whiteland #NetGalley

This was terribly disjointed and manic. Not a fan, would not recommend. I was looking forward to it because I love Scandi horror but this fell flat on all accounts.

Unfortunately I had difficulties downloading this book to my kindle - maybe it wasn't offered in this format??

Either way, it absolutely sounds like my type of story so I will be requesting this book from my local library and will be sure to leave a review on Goodreads as always!

Not my cup of tea. I was looking for a horror book but it was more of a dark fairy tale and fantasy. I wish there was more suspense in the book.

Didn't capture my attention and engagement. I'll hopefully try again in the future.
Didn't capture my attention and engagement. I'll hopefully try again in the future.

The premise was intriguing and I was interested in the beginning, but the story fizzled out for me and really lost my interest.

This is a awesome read. It has a wonderfully well written plot and story line that had me engaged from the very beginning. .I loved the characters and found them very believable. The suspense was great and I found myself second guessing myself throughout the entire book.

The beginning of this book was serving all sorts of horror realness for me. But the further along we got, the less I was able to remain connected. And it was not the writing style, because Rosie Cranie-Higgs can definitely write! I think I might have had some issues with the actual dialogue at times and the inner-workings of the mindsets involved? And while the writing style kept me chugging along, there was not so much of a payoff for me. I wonder if slightly younger crowd would enjoy this more than me - I may not have been the target audience. But I will definitely check more out from this author in the future!

I wanted to like this book. The cover and synopsis gave me spooky vibes. stopped reading the book at the 20 percent mark. I do not think the book was for me.

I have to be honest, this book never worked for me. The plot took a long time to get started - I was a third of the way in before it even reached what was described in the blurb - and once it did, it was disappointingly predictable. The characters had great promise but all read a much different age than they actually were, making them completely unbelievable.

The writing focused too much on description and not enough on action, bogging me down in descriptions of 'chocolate eyes' or reminding me how beautiful a character was when they were undergoing something horrific. The idea was brilliant - the house truly creative with some genuinely horrifying elements - but the execution fell horrifically flat for me.

This book was not for me. I attempted multiple times to get into the story, but the writing seemed to disjointed for me.

Hi, I lost the eARC of this book so I won't be able to review this book. I hope you understand. I really wanted to read it but unfortunately my phone got formatted and I lost the copy.

When I started this book, I thought of it as a fantasy horror story on steroids. I was sucked in immediately, ready to go down the rabbit hole of a unique fairy tale adventure. The beginning blew me away with uncertainty, and I couldn’t read fast enough to unravel the mystery.
Then, everything started to sputter. Dialogue between the two main characters became repetitive. The adventures felt drawn out without a real sense of direction. The tension so brilliantly developed in the first act now dragged and nearly vanished mid-book. I started skimming and had to reread sections. Part of it was my own impatience. The delicate folds of the plot simply didn’t unravel fast enough. The reaction scenes seemed unnecessarily drawn out when I longed for more action. The protagonist’s arc didn’t develop quick enough to hold my attention which left me unenthusiastically cheering for her throughout the final moments.
It was disappointing, and I even found myself wondering how the shift had occurred. The actual writing style was well done. There’s vivid imagery and lovely descriptions throughout the entire book, and the action scenes incite all the senses, but even with this stellar technique, I couldn’t stay focused on a plot that simply lost speed in the middle.
While this book wasn’t for me, I’d absolutely read another book by the author. It’s a unique premise with lots of imagination spilling into the story world. The author clearly is a skilled wordsmith in terms of syntax and sentence construction, and I’d love to read more in the future in hopes that plot development would continue to improve.

Reading this book was difficult and I could only make it through a third of the novel. It reads like an attempt to be creative with writing style but, unfortunately, it just makes it hard to follow. The timeline was slow and while the character development was fair, it was confusing when the parents were referred to by their given names from the children's POV.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and BHC Press in exchange for an honest review. I thank them for this opportunity.

Romy and Kira are on vacation with their parents when Romy suddenly disappears into the night. The next morning, Kira, with the help of Callum, a local ski-instructor, finds her in a half-frozen and delirious state. After regaining her composure, Romy becomes strangely violent and hurts Kira and herself. Sensing something is amiss, Kira and Callum try to find out what happened on the fateful night Romy disappeared. In doing so, they encounter an otherworldly occurrence among the frozen forests and snowcapped mountains.

Rosie Cranie-Higgs adapts a unique writing style in her debut novel, Whiteland. The book, at least initially, is very atmospheric. The depiction of the cold mountains and the desolate forests provides a perfect setting for such a spooky tale. The stark contrast between the siblings’ characters is evident from the beginning. The opening chapter, which superbly depicts the turmoil inside Romy’s mind, captivated me. However, after a few more chapters, I started losing interest. The story progressed too slowly for my choice. The dialogues sounded overly dramatic. Conjuring up the uncanny circumstances Kira and Callum experienced proved difficult.

Even though the genre is one of my absolute favorites, I did not enjoy the reading experience. The book has enormous potential; however, the execution leaves something to be desired. Those who are into atmospheric horror or fantasy novels and do not mind slow burns might want to read this book.

The novel includes magic, folklore, a forest and Scandinavian gods. This was what initially attracted me to the book as well as a dark mystery and a young girl that disappears and comes back changed.

We follow a family with two daughters that are currently on holidays in the snow. One of the girls disappears one night and it is found the next morning outside covered in snow. She should not have survived yet she did. Not only did she survive but she also appears to have changed.

The other sister, Kira, is investigating the woods together with the boy that helped find her sister. Unfortunately most of the family dynamics feel so unrealistic and the way the characters behave it is just hard to believe.

The mystery of the returned sister and the woods and what they hide started being interesting but it also quickly became repetitive, boring and I completely lost interest in the story.