The buried - Lizzie strong

I was looking forward to reading this one but unfortunately it expired before I got chance to, sorry.

In this book, we follow 3 separate characters navigating some pretty dramatic circumstances and read about how they feel and deal with these situations. As a reader, I really enjoy books written in multiple perspectives, so I did not feel as though the breaks in action (due to being thrust into another character’s narrative) took away from the overall story. I can see why some may be unaccustomed to this style of writing and feel as though it takes away from the story but I personally feel like it makes me want to read on.
I felt that the characters were relatable for young adults and this audience would be able to empathise with how the characters were dealing with their experiences.
On the whole I enjoyed the storyline, however, I felt as so rather than having a number of events happening one after the other, adding to the drama, the author dragged out the same issues from close to the beginning of the book and therefore I didn’t get as much development out of the characters as I would have liked.
However, an overall good start to the series and I will probably read on.
3 star rating.

trigger warning
<spoiler> cancer, trauma, grief, gore </spoiler>

A monster is let loose, and the person who's responsible thought she could outrun it. Turns out, she can't.

We have three witches, two of whom don't know it yet. They're connected - by their powers, by living in the same are, and one of them, the seer, has this weird telepathy thing going on.

The pacing was off. Some parts were strangely hurried while other parts were skipped over in an unreasonable way. Imagine you're a teenager, you're gone for two days without saying anything, and once your back home, your single mom waits multiple days to ask what's up - a conversation that ends with "well, keep your secrets, but don't lie to me".
Does that sound realistic to you?

The three main characters felt ... the same. I constantly had trouble to keep Cecilia and Maggie apart in my brain. In theory, sure, the one is the seer the other is the siren and has cancer, sure. But when it comes to the plot, they felt very, very similiar.

Important things that should have been acknowledged <i>now</i> are ignored for a bit to have drama first, which feels real if all participants are teenagers, but as soon as you get supposedly mature adults in the mix, is just plain weird.

The ending was abrupt and dissatisfying. It felt jarring, like stopping in the middle of the thing.
While this has much potential, I didn't really like it and feel queer-baited because I was told it would include an ace character, but didn't see them.

The arc was provided by the publisher.

Buried is as book that I wasn't expecting, and that wasn't always the best thing. What it is is a young adult/ new adult book that isn't very afraid to get into the horror and gory aspects of the story. It is genuinely creepy at times, but it is offset by how often the three protagonists, especially Cecelia just break down into tears. Granted the tears are warranted, but often times it feels like they become short hand for expressing all of the girls' negative emotions instead of other ways to express themselves. Lots of not so great things happen to the three girls here and emotions are strained to say the least, but there are few ways the girls are allowed to outwardly show their emotions beyond just bursting into tears when things get to be too much.

This book has no problem going to dark places, as it starts off with Quinn, a witch with a volatile power who managed to bring a really bad guy back to life in the form of a monster. Maggie Morton is a YouTube pop star who is diagnosed with cancer and absolutely floored when she realizes she may lose her voice. Oh, and she's a siren who kept herself healthy with her powers before she took a break and the cancer rapidly took over. Cecelia is psychically connected to Quinn, but is timid because of a lifetime of being ostracized for her own gift of sight. All three girls are brought together because the undead monster found its way to their small Oklahoma town and threatened everyone in it.

I liked the majority of this book, and look forward to seeing what the rest of the series will look like, but I thought there was a lot of stuff going on without actually moving the plot too much. I also liked that each girl has a distinct personality, but I thought that Maggie was allowed to have the largest range of expressed emotions. Quinn rarely gets to move from the coolly sardonic teen she is while Cecelia doesn't get a chance to really move out of her shyness. So the book mostly consists of the girls fighting each other, discovering a little of their powers, and fighting the monster. I also loved that it isn't afraid of its horror nature, and Lee Ashwood's undead corpse is described in nice, disgusting detail. There's even a scene in which I was like "no, they really didn't go there did they?" But there is no huge sense of dread, even as we find out that Ashwood's powers are evolving. Still, it has some solid body horror and a different type of tension that props up by the end of the book.

I'd say this is a solid book because of the premise, and some of the imagery. I thought the plot didn't get a chance to move a long, but it did have some really great stand out sequences. It is broken into three narrators, which isn't bad because each chapter is clearly labeled as to who is taking over. The three girls are fine, but sometimes are limited by the story. I want to say that the story desperately wants Quinn and Cecelia to develop a romance, but it doesn't quite get there yet. This very much a set up for the second book, and I hope that it blows us out of the water.

*I received this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

3.50 Stars. This was pretty crazy. If you have read my reviews this year you might notice that I have been complaining about reading a lot of well written books, but I’m just not connecting with them. Funny enough, the opposite was true with this book. Now, I don’t mean that this was poorly written, but it does have its issues and writing bumps. But on the good side, I was just completely entertained. This was that “I’m still stuck in the house on a Covid Friday night but I didn’t mind because of the high entertainment level kind of book”. So I think this was about a 3 star okay or average level quality book, but I had fun so I bumped it up to give it an extra half star.

This is YA horror/paranormal. The horror is more on the gross level kind of horror, then the scary type horror. In fact, this book had more bodily fluids and just a ton of ichor and everything gross, that I have read in a while. This is a YA book but it is very violent and messy so it seems to be more geared towards older teens and adults.

I love books about witches and YA seems to go really well with witches. Give a teenager filled with angst, some magical powers, and you are bound for some good entertainment which this book didn’t disappoint. I’m a big first person fan so I was excited that this book was in it. However, I was surprised to get three main POV’s in first person. I don’t care what author you are or how many books you have written, because that is a big undertaking. I think this is where Strong ran into some of her biggest bumps. I understand why Strong chose to do it, but I think if she would have only done one POV or even just two, I think the book would have flowed better. The three main characters are all pretty unique, but at times (when we are in their head) their voices sounded too similar. It took me way longer than it should have to not get confused as to who’s head I’m in. Luckily, about the second half of the book it feels much better and they all finally feel unique. Which was great when that happened because then I connected to two of them and started to really care what happened.

The pace was a little all over at times for me. Sometimes it seemed to slow way down, and other times I could not turn the pages fast enough. I prefer a more steady build then such an up and down read, but when the book would really pick up, it sure was a ton of fun. Unfortunately, this brings me to another issue I had. There are a lot of action and fight scenes with monster zombie things, all things I love, but sometimes I didn’t exactly know what was going on. I can’t quite put my finger on what was wrong beyond just saying that the action scenes need more detail and clarity. I like to picture the scenes like a movie in my mind, but this movie would get stuck on pause since I could not picture certain things happening. There were also times that the book needed more dialogue tags. Not only are there three main characters, there are also a ton of important secondary characters too. All the characters speaking were sometimes confusing so I would have to stop and reread to try to figure out who actually was talking when. On the good side, I think these are two things that Strong can easily fix for next book.

Speaking of next books, this does end on a cliffhanger. I heard that this was a book one so I was prepared. Lots of big storylines are still open so I hope we get book two soon. I also want to quickly mention that there was no romance in this book, but I see a possible WLW relationship for two of the witches and maybe even an M/F relationship for the third witch. It’s still very early and I don’t really know where Strong will go, but I’m excited to find out.

In the end this was a book that had its share of bumps, but I still liked it. I would recommend this to YA horror fans, if you don’t mind a book that has some issue but that’s big on entertainment. This is not a book to take too seriously; it’s the kind to just have fun with. I will keep my eye out for book two and I hope we get to see Strong growing as an author since there is a lot of potential here.

I want to thank Netgalley, Lizzie Strong, and NineStar Press for giving me a chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Let me talk first about the characters; I love the chemistry between the three girls, they are chaotic together but in an amusing way. Quinn is the kind of character that is rebellious, she do things before she can even think about it that it also made her impulsive. Honestly, most of the problems in this book was caused by her. She is also feisty. Now, Cecelia is the independent one and mostly the one who will rationalize problems. She's like the mother of the group. I love how her character is brave but also soft-hearted. As for Maggie, I can't say much about her. She's like the bossy one in the group and mostly resort to her emotions than thinking rationally. Her character is a little difficult to observe because nothing really stands out in her beside being the popular/celebrity character.

Just by reading each of the girls' chapters in the beginning, I can clearly tell that their lives are so different from each other. But like I said it didn't stop them from having such a good chemistry. It makes me looking more forward to the part where they will actually meet.

As for the book itself, the opening was pretty intense. It literally makes me more interested to read further into the story. It's also getting more interesting when it introduces the magic of the main characters. Their magic system is pretty simple though. It's easy to understand how it works. And whenever this book mentions about Leo Ashwood, it makes me remind of classic gothic and horror stories that I almost think that this is a mix retelling of those stories---which I think is so fascinating and enjoyable to read!

Now, my problem with this book is that it's hard to connect to the story. Yes, I am invested with the characters, but the plot feels so far away for me to reach. I have so many questions on the plot but it just keeps going without further explanations. There are many metaphorical way this book describe something instead of just telling it straight away that it makes it more confusing. The pacing is also weird. There are some parts that happens so fast and then all of a sudden the book will slow down. Like it has a peak and then when you assume that it's the climax it will suddenly go downhill. I also don't understand why the author is highlighting some characters that weren't really necessary for the plot. I'm not saying that the book should just focus on the main characters, but the way that the other characters will appear in the picture is so confusing. I'm like, "why is this character suddenly involved?". I feel like the author tries to expand the world but failed to properly execute it.

Overall, I rated this book 3 out of 5 stars. It's true that I have some issues with the plot and it still left me so many questions. But I think if you are looking for a book with easy to grasp magic system and good chemistry between the characters, I think you should try this one!

i got an ARC in exhange for a review!

it's........ something. the plot felt confusing at times - i have the slight impression they killed the dude once, and then suddenly he was back? idk. and i liked the characters! everyone felt unique and w their own sense of personality - as long as they weren't in their own povs, in which case no one has a very strong voice. but seen from the outside? hell yeah dude.
however the whole..... it lost me, which is why it isn't a higher rating. the book could stand a bit more of editing to make sure everyone stood out re: character voice and decisions. not sure if it's the arc or maybe it'll be edited out in the final version but theres a few mistakes. nothing too big, just.... spotty.

also - i hope theres a second book! really good and interesting plot leftovers here.

anyway a solid 3/5

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, although the description sounded like everything I enjoy reading, I DNF'd this book at 30%. There are three point of view characters, all teenage girls, and unfortunately their narrative voices are extremely similar: overdramatic and given to long meandering introspections using extremely bizarre metaphors, which made it difficult to tell them apart or get invested in any one of them. In addition, a lot of the beats the plot rides on doesn't feel like it's how things happen in real life and I kept getting distracted by those. (ie, even if we assume that's how an interrogation of a murder suspect works, can her lawyer really just vanish without a trace and nobody follow up with the assumed murderer? Can someone not just kidnap a child from an unreported corpse but then put her through the school system as an adoptee with no paper trail?) The fact these things weren't addressed by a third of the way through at unfortunately made it feel ungrounded in reality, when I needed the core of reality to support the magical portions.

There's the seeds of an interesting plot here with all three girls being able to use magic they can't really control and why that might be, but I don't think this story is for me. Someone who can connect more with these characters , or has less concern with the realism portions being grounded, may enjoy this more.