Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but don’t try telling Wyatt, the main character in “The Violent Season” that. She’s convinced pretty much down to her marrow that in her tiny hometown of Wolf Ridge, the month of November means the whole town comes down with what she calls the “November illness”, which every year as long as she can remember has coincided with one or more major crime resulting in death happening during the month of November. And last year, the crime was the brutal homicide of her mother, which is still unsolved.

Her best friend and man she loves, Cash, keeps telling her that it’s just because everyone has the potential to be bad and to do bad things. Her dad has just been kind of lost since her mom was murdered. The police department doesn’t even seem to care anymore, and no one else seems spooked by the annual November murders. But Wyatt is. She can see the violence in Cash’s eyes when he talks about their classmate Porter, and she can feel a certain darkness even within herself. Her mother’s ghost haunts the upstairs of their house, and Wyatt desperately wants to know who killed her mom and why, even as she’s soaked in guilt and grief over how much she and her mom fought and how their parting words to one another were anything but kind.

“The Violent Season” really tosses the ball in the air and asks the reader to inspect the inherent darkness of human nature from a variety of angles. This isn’t about good or evil, because those are moral constructs and morals are subjective. This is about the shades of grey that are within us all. Interspersed with the main narrative (and sometimes mentioned in the main narrative) there are stories of other crimes that happened in November in this town that make you ask: was this a violent crime, or just an accident? Was this an accident or a brutal murder? When someone has obviously been bullied and harassed, who’s to blame for their suicide? Is there anyone to blame at all but the mental illness in their brain? If a child shoots another child because they got a hold of a gun, is that an inherently violent act? I’m not here to weigh in with my opinion on these matters. I’m here to tell you this book wants you to look at the nature of the darkness inside all of us and examine it from different angles. What looks violent to one person might just look like a sad accident to someone else.

I’ve read a lot of good psychological/thriller/horror books as of late, and this was a great one, but it wasn’t one I think I’d read again and again. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I totally recommend it because the characters are vastly interesting and I do love a fiendishly compelling look into aspects of human nature. Because violence can be virulent. Studies on gun violence have proven that. But just because murders and ice cream sales both increase during the summer doesn’t mean that ice cream makes you want to murder someone. Correlation versus causation.

Wow, what a wild ride. From the start I had no idea where the book was going. While billed as a YA novel, it is much darker than your normal YA novel. It reminded me of a cross between The Purge, old Dean Koontz and Twilight (for the teen angst). The plot moves along quickly as you just want to know more. I could have had a little less romance, but I loved Wyatt. She was easy to root for. It is pure warped entertainment.

Wyatt is convinced her small town has a sickness every November after she finds her mother murdered.

Wyatt comes to learn the truth of who her mother’s killer was, and the reader is taken through a well- written story to get there.

Trigger warning: abusive relationship, among other things

I have mixed feelings about this one. While I did like the book, what I read and what I expected were two different things. The book description makes it sound like it is more of a mystery, where the main character, Wyatt, believes a strange sickness is plaguing the town of Wolf Ridge, causing an uptick in deaths every November. Her desire to figure out the truth is propelled by her mother’s murder the year before.

The mystery was there, but I felt it took a backseat to the real focus of the book, which is the dangers of toxic/abusive relationships and the effects it has on each person. The author did a really good job of creating complex characters and exploring the dynamic between abuser and partner, but I might have liked this one more if it had been marketed differently.

Also, this book is dark and you should check out the trigger warnings before you read it, which include attempted rape, gaslighting, suicide, sexual assault, abuse, death of a parent.

The Violent Season was an interesting premise. Does a town have some sort of curse that makes the citizens violent in November? Some people are convinced. Some are not. I wish more had been put into this but it seemed like a background to the central mystery, what happened to Wyatt's mother? Who killed her? Wyatt doesn't have any memory of it and she is at least partially convinced that there is a curse on her town. The story follows her as she works through her grief and her abusive relationship with her best friend.

There are some triggers in this and they are handled very well. I liked the book but it felt like it wasn't sure what it was trying to be all of the time. I'd read this author again.

Wyatt Green knows firsthand that evil lives in her hometown, Wolf Ridge. In November, murderous impulses rise to the surface, and her mother was the most recent victim. It isn't some random outsider who wandered into town, it is someone who lives here, someone Wyatt knows, and she is going to find out who is the wolf hiding in sheep's clothing.
Wyatt only has one person she trusts with her whole heart, Cash. She has been obsessed/in love with him since they were children on the playground. Even if he manages to isolate her, even if he will never love her, even if Wolf Ridge's sickness is now hiding behind his eyes, Wyatt cannot stay away from him. When a school assignment partners her with Porter, Cash's nemesis, it seems nothing good can come from this triangle. And it shouldn't, but Wyatt experiences a different kind of relationship with Porter, one where the sickness doesn't totally envelop her anymore.
When the truth about her mother's death comes out, Wyatt will have to face reality without the blinders that Cash provided. The mystery surrounding this town sucked me in and even when I started to look twice at certain people, I was not prepared for the jaw-dropping conclusion.
Even though this is marketed as YA and the main characters are teenagers, this is one dark and disturbing book. Be prepared if violence, murder, or suicide are triggers for you, but for me, I could not look away and sat quietly stunned after I finished the last page. I was looking over my shoulder the entire time I was reading. I was more horrified when the author revealed the true nature of the sickness.

The fall season is my favorite time of year to curl up with a creepy, suspenseful novel. The Violent Season caught my eye with the cover, piqued my interest with the synopsis, and grabbed my full attention right from the first page.

This is a riveting debut novel that pulled me in quickly and didn’t want to let me go. Wyatt had suffered through an unimaginable loss, but then again, Wolf Ridge, Vermont was accustomed to loss. Every November, people in this sleepy little town end up dying. For such a small blip on the map, Wolf Ridge has had more than its share of tragedies. People are murdered, commit suicide, and die accidentally. Wyatt thinks that there’s a “sickness” that occurs in Wolf Ridge, an inexplicable darkness that consumes people and forces them to act violently. While Wyatt can’t get the images of her own mother’s death from her mind, she is also aware that this November is apt to bring more death and brutality to the town, and she’s seen the threat of this “sickness” begin to darken her own best friend’s eyes.

The Violent Season is a coming-of-age novel that deals with loss, grief, and letting go. It surprised me with how deep and introspective this novel went. It ended up being so much more than just the mystery of the town. While I was completely enthralled by the happenings of this community, I was also invested in Wyatt. She was an interesting character. She was a teenager who was filled with an abundance of hurt. She tried to shield herself from any additional pain by building up walls and toughness, but underneath it all, she was just a girl, trying to navigate through adolescence, wondering what she could believe, who she could trust, and what exactly happened to her mother.

Coming from a small town, and having visited Vermont several times, I could visualize every detail of this fictional community. It was the ideal setting for this thriller. I felt as if I were right there, feeling the chill in the air, witnessing the strange phenomena, and trying to figure out what was going on in Wolf Ridge.

The Violent Season was a great novel to kick off the fall season with. It satisfied the craving that I had for a thrilling, mysterious novel, and kept me glued to the pages from beginning to end. I will definitely be keeping my eye out for the next book by Sara Walters.

*4.5 Stars

This was a wild ride of a book! The mystery kept me hooked! The only downfall was that I wanted more. More character development, more back story.

Every November the small town of Wolf Ridge, VT seems to be plagued by mysterious murders. Wyatt Green, the 17 year old narrator of the book, found her own mother murdered last year and she’s determined to figure out what is going on in her town.

Wyatt has a complicated relationship with her boyfriend Cash that is tarnished by abuse, but Wyatt can’t seem to escape him and her undying love for him, that is until she meets Porter Dawes. Not suprisingly, these two guys don’t like each other very much. They have all been plagued by The Violent Season, losing someone close to them. But is it a town sickness or is the problem something bigger?

This was a quick, spooky October read, but the ending felt very predictable to me. Also, I don’t typically read YA fiction so the character development and writing definitely felt juvenile. I’m not quite sure I would want my high schooler to read this either, as it was fairly dark in content with topics of rape, suicide, alcohol, and domestic violence.

I was prepared for this book being a little dark, but I felt that the blurb misled me into think this was a book about small town violence and a murder mystery to be solved, when in reality it's solely about an abusive relationship. I don't know if I would have read this book had I of known that in advance, and the attempted rape scene really stuck with me. There were no trigger warnings listed at the start of this copy of this book that I read.

This is a beautifully written story that just felt so raw, and strongly reminded me of [book:What Beauty There Is|52515989], another book set in small town America. Wyatt and Cash's relationship was almost painfully realistic, and that's why the more difficult scenes really stuck with me. I'm glad we had the calm presence of Porter to balance out the two, because the story may have been a chaotic mess without him.

[Also, why did we get no conclusion about Quinn? Is she okay?]

Wyatt lives in a town where every November it seems a darkness falls upon the town. The month seems to always user in a series of deaths, murders, and suicides. When Wyatt's own mom is consumed by this darkness Wyatt tries to find out what really happened to her mom. Can she break out of the own personal darkness she has placed her self in? Will she be able to find out the truth about what happened to her mom? Is the darkness real or is is just a coincidence? Are her friends truly her friends?

This book will draw you in right away and it doesn't let go. I was not expecting to be so sucked into the book. There was just something about the dynamic between Wyatt, Cash, and Preston that really helped carry the book. Cole being the dark and Preston being the light and Wyatt the moth who is drawn continuously between the two. Honestly I could have finished it in one day if I had had the time. I look forward to recommending this book at our library.

Thank you to SOURCEBOOKS Fire and Netgalley for letting me read an advance copy.

This is one of those books that I chose because the plot was too attractive to pass up. I'll be honest, I'm a huge fan of YA thrillers, so I enjoy them without much problem, this book was no exception.
What stands out the most in this story is the setting, the author does a great job creating this cold, oppressive and suffocating atmosphere. The characters feel quite melancholic and have troubled stories that accentuate this aspect of the plot.
However, although the setting is quite good, the story did not convince me, I enjoyed it, but I think that considering how attractive the plot is, the development was not so good and the mystery of the town was mostly forgotten .
The characters are fine, but I would have liked a bit more variety, especially with respect to adults (since we are in a town with a small enrollment, it does not surprise me that there are few teenage characters interacting).
The story has a lot of action and I think it has a good rhythm, but it lacked development to make the plot feel more complete.
In any case, it was a reading that I enjoyed for the most part, although I would have liked him to exploit his approach more, it was a fairly entertaining book. I give it a 3.5 / 4.

When I first heard about this book, it sounded like an eclectic mix of The Purge mixed with a science-fiction worthy violence-virus which infected a town each November leaving a lot of devastation in it's wake. In truth, the main focus of this book is really about the emotions and trauma we feel when we experience pain, hurt and suffering at the hands of the people we love, or even ourselves.

This novel definitely earns it's place amongst the thriller section of the YA genre. We are led on a spiral of events and revelations which keep twisting and turning as the novel progresses. I kept coming up with little theories about who did what or which characters I could trust but then as the plot got deeper I found myself constantly changing my mind! The pace kept me on my toes right up until the very final pages and the ending left me with with a haunting sense of foreboding which is perfectly in-keeping with the upcoming spooky season.

Full review at: https://thebiblioshelf.com/2021/10/05/biblioshelf-musings-the-violent-season-by-sara-walters/ [published 05.10.21]

Trigger warning: Violence and sex

Okay soooo. This book is a hell of a journey. It's one of those thrillers that you can see in the movies and it's perfectly executed.

The story is set in the small town of vermont, wolf ridge, where every month of november random people die. Last november, Wyatt's mother died as reported some intruder came to their house and killed her. With her situation she believes her town is in "November Sickness". As the story continues, so much revelation happens to Wyatt that she doesn't know what's the truth behind her mother's death.

I'm really proud of this book as Wyatt continues to unravel everything about her situation. I can totally see how hard it is for her to move on and stay away from what's happening to her. The mystery stays hidden but it's not really that surprising for me who messes up with Wyatt. But Wyatt's character development amazed me. She's really persistent and she never gives up on finding out what's happening to her town. She pushed herself up and that way I'm really proud of her! There are some points where I'm very mad but I understand why she has to be who she is in the story. As for the other characters, I like how the author draws them so irritatingly but lovable at the same time. I seriously love them too.

The book is very fast paced and I really cannot put it down easily. I love the twist and the mystery that keeps me on my toes. The ending was satisfying and I'm really happy with the outcome! I cannot wait for you to read it!

In a small town that gets haunted with violence every November, the deaths start to stack up. Last year, Wyatt’s mother was one of the victims, murdered in their house and left for Wyatt to find.

Convinced the “November Sickness” is more than just an urban legend, Wyatt tries to find her mother’s killer and keep her friends safe. But when her best friend, Cash, starts to turn on her Will their friendship be salvaged?

This ya thriller is definitely dark and addresses some hard topics( tw: death, suicide, sexual assault). Wyatt is a complex, well written character. She is damaged and struggling but you fall in love with her dark character. Sara Walters does a great job showing how much Wyatt is struggling with her mothers death and how the ghosts of her past haunt her. Wyatt’s obsession with her friend Cash is well written and gives you insight into why she keeps going back to him.

This is a dark, twisted story great for the spooky Halloween time! This is classified as a ya mystery but I think it is more thriller/ almost horror. Definitely darker than your average ya mystery.

This was a pretty quick read and I felt like it was pretty predictable. I struggled to get into this book but I think that was due to the reading slump I was working my way out of and not this book. This is a great Halloween time story and I loved the characters and spooky vibes!

Thank you netgalley for the free e- arc in exchange for my honest review!

What was this book? This was a suspenseful, twisted, intense book full of uneasiness, and the feeling of needing to watch your back. I was hooked within the first couple of pages, and my mind automatically went to trying to figure out what the heck was happening in this town.
When I was reading this I felt a sense of vagueness. I’m not sure if this was purposeful, but as the reader, we were so within Wyatt's mind, that everything going on around her felt minimized or vague or like we never got the entire picture. THIS DEFINITELY added to this unnerving feeling I had throughout the book but I think it worked in a great way.
The vagueness I felt while reading does kind of make sense in what we find out later. Once we find out about how Wyatt and Cash really separated themselves from everyone but each other it makes sense that everything around her is minimized in the reader's POV. Her world is focused on what Cash wants and needs, so It makes sense that everything else is just background noise. IDK if that makes sense, but that’s what I felt out of the book.
I was hoping for something a little more mysterious/creepy but it was a pretty unnerving book. Definitely not a happy read but if you’re looking for something that will make you feel uneasy this may be the book for you.

First off, thank you to Netgalley for my advance copy in exchange for my review.
 
This book is labeled YA thriller but it is dark y’all. Like really dark. I absolutely loved the main character Wyatt. She is complexed, damaged and raw in the most relatable way. The writing is excellent and this author has some serious talent. I mean, this is a debut! So way to go Sara Walters for that!
 
I was totally interested from the beginning to see where this was going to go. I mean, was the whole town “sick” or what? The mystery of it was wonderful. There are a ton of trigger warnings in this one so if sexual assault, suicide and murder trigger you be warned. There is one particularly rough scene. I thought that Wyatt’s obsession with Cash was a bit over the top but she’s 16, who wasn’t over the top at that age?
 
I devoured this in a sitting! All in all I really enjoyed this and can’t wait to see what she has for us next!!!!

The entire team while I was reading this, the only thing I could think of was that the story seemed to give the same vibes as the show 'Panic' on Amazon Prime. It just gave similar vibes and I think that made it so I enjoyed the small town vibes more.

Also the premise just sounded so cool - but I will say that it was kind of easy to guess where the plot was going. That wasn't necessarily a detriment, I think it allowed us to connect with Wyatt despite how obvious the answers were. We were able to sink into that depression and really dark place with her without having the distraction of trying to figure out answers. I also just really loved Wyatt's character, the really dark and gritty character were really working for her. One thing I will say I didn't wholly love about Wyatt was her needing to say she was "with sharp edges, cuss words, cigarettes, diamond tough" every other paragraph in the same chapter. Like at first, I really liked her getting realize the different sides to herself but then it just became repetitive and taking away from the story.

Overall, I just really enjoyed the story. It was dark and violent and really set the mood for a Spooky Season this October.

Some TW/CW for this book: sexual assault, nonconsensual sex on page, death of a loved one, revenge porn, emotional manipulation

Thank you so much to Sourcebooks for giving the opportunity to read the e-ARC & were also amazing enough to send the audiobook my way! Y'all know how much I love a good audiobook :)

A year after her mother's murder, a teen tries to track down her murderer and unravel the secrets of the supposedly curse-inspired violence that plagues her hometown each November.

YA readers who like horrifying thrillers (or thrilling horror?) won't be able to stop turning these pages. Themes of abuse run underneath the suspenseful thriller plot adding depth to this high-concept story. Though the premise might sound like a mystery, it is really more on the thriller/horror border and will most satisfy readers of those genres.

A small town where people crave violence....like murdering? Check. A mother’s unsolved murder? Check. Friends who turn on one another? Check. Nobody believes you when you say this November sickness is real? Check.

This is a fantastic YA thriller. There are lots of surprises, and some major things will be revealed. And that twist? Holy cow. It leaves one wondering “what did I just read?”. I had to sit for a few minutes after I finished just so I could wrap my mind against what I had devoured in less than 24 hours. This is a must read for anyone looking for a brilliant YA thriller!

Thanks to Sarah Walters, Source Books Fire, and Netgalley for the chance to read and review this ARC in exchange for my honest thoughts.