The world-building was great but the characters were just okay. I didn't find myself rooting for them at all, even though I know we are supposed to be on Laurel's side. The writing was good enough that I'll look out for other books by Kilcoyne, this one just didn't do it for me.

POST: 7/6/22
Wake the Bones by Elizabeth Kilcoyne
St. Martin’s Press
E-book Netgalley ARC
YA Horror/fantasy

Wake the Bones is the debut novel of playwright and poet Elizabeth Kilcoyne. It’s a YA horror story set in Kentucky in a small town called Dry Valley. The plot follows Laurel Early, a young girl that just dropped out of her first year at college and has moved back home to work on the family tobacco farm with her uncle and three young men that she grew up with in town. Readers quickly find out that Laurel has the ability to see and feel the last few moments of death of the person or animal whose bones she is touching. Laurel and the boys quickly discover that something dark is haunting the Early farm, and targeting Laurel. What follows is a decently well written and paced horror story that involves mystery, past secrets, and a devil that can animate bones.
The story did feel like it jumped a few times, but was overall paced well. There were also occasions of the prose ending a scene and starting the next one a little jarringly. A few times not only during chapters but ending and starting new ones I had to go back and reread a little to see if I had missed something or skipped a page. I also found the characters to be a little stagnant, and the change that was given to the characters was predictable.
Despite the flaws, Kilcoyne does a great job with her descriptions especially when she talks about the setting. Readers will be able to feel the sticky Kentucky heat and experience the fear-inducing darkness of a rural farm. Two gay characters in the story were also written well. Instead of seeming like Kilcoyne just wrote them in for the sake of diversity, both characters have a well-rounded development.
Overall I would rate this book a 3 out of 5. It was a good read. I don’t feel like I wasted my time with it, but it did leave something to be desired. I enjoy horror that is darker, but this would likely be a good choice for a reader looking to get into YA horror that is not as desensitized to it as I am.

Well, I'm really glad other people are liking this one because it was not it for me. This is especially unfortunate as I really expected to love this book.

Pretty much everything in this book was underdeveloped from plot to characters to the magic system. There's several inconsistencies in the book - and really I'm unsure if our characters are like 17 or like 21? Everyone treats the MC like she's really young and she dropped out of her first year of college but she also said it's been 20 years since her mom died. IDK.

And that devil mentioned on the back of the book is barely in the book.

This storyline seemed promising and maybe that it would have an element of horror, but ultimately I found myself skipping pages because nothing really happened. It was very slow, and didn't really deliver on the promise of intriguing storylines.

I think this story would work well for others, so I plan to add it to our collection, but it was not the book for me.

Wake the Bones is the debut novel by Elizabeth Kilcoyne. In this book, we follow our main character, Laurel Early, after she has dropped out of school and moved back home to her family farm. When she isn’t working on the farm itself, she is figuring out what to do with all the bones she finds and the eerie presence that seems to be hanging around. Along with her friend group, Laurel begins to investigate to see if they can find out what exactly is going on.

First off, this is a weird book and I am a weird book girly. Give me some spooky vibes and a barely explained magic system and I am here for it. I did find this book to be a little more odd than I was anticipating. I had to keep rereading chunks just to make sure I understood what was going on and I still don’t think I got it 100%.

This is also marketed as young adult and I think it is more of a new adult book. Just based on the age of the characters and some of the situations that come up.

This first half of this book was pretty slow. It took me awhile to get through. But the second half flew by. Once all the character had been introduced and the plot started moving, I started to enjoy the book a lot more. The stand out character for me was Christine. She was just so witchy and spooky. I wish there were more scenes with her in them.

All in all, this was a fine debut. The writing was really gorgeous. Some of it just didn’t feel super cohesive. I would say if you enjoyed House of Hollows, you would probably enjoy this book.

Wake the Bones is a book that takes a bit to get into because we jump right into the middle of the story. It all seemed so ordinary. As a Vermonter, it was an utterly relatable day-to-day life. But then the characters revealed themselves. Their depth poured off the page in the middle of this eerie story, and I found myself invested in them.

“The best people can do around here is tell me they don’t care. I don’t want to be absolved. I want to exist.”

Every character is unique and has something going on. With the added supernatural element, there’s an in-depth story here. I enjoyed the paranormal elements but feel some things came too easily for Laurel, and I would have liked to see them explored. As some other reviewers have mentioned, this doesn’t feel quite YA. They’re 19 and 20, so upper YA, at best. For me, that’s not an issue, though it could be with younger readers. The book is atmospheric and eerie, and once it finds its groove, it’s hard to put down. Thank you, Wednesday Books/St. Martin’s, for sending this along!

So...Honestly? I'm not sure what I just read. It didn't feel like YA, maybe New Adult? It was a little creepy, but I don't know if I'd say horror. It definitely was dark and atmospheric. There's magic. There's angst. There's self-discovery. I liked Ms. Kilcoyne's writing style, it was full of imagery and she does a great job pulling you into Laurel's world.

There's a lot going on in this book. Even though the main characters are in their 20s, it has a coming-of-age vibe. Romance. Mystery. LGBTQ acceptance struggles. Abuse. Dark magic. Evil. Ghosts. Sometimes it was hard to keep up with the different. jumps between story elements as they wove back and forth and across different points of view. I would have liked to see more from Christine, I think an opportunity was missed there.

I definitely enjoyed parts of Wake the Bones, but as a whole I just felt confused when I was done. Maybe that's the sign of a great book? I definitely kept thinking about it even after I finished.

Not sure where I stand with this book, on one hand it intrigued me a lot, there's the atmosphere of a horror book. But I wasn't a fan of the characters and the situations felt difficult to grasp at times. Would definitely recommend this to horror fans!

I've been waiting to read this for some time and was really happy to get an ARC copy.

This was a strong debut. The horror elements were creepy and vivid, the characters were strong and interesting. I really enjoyed the relationships, not just the romantic ties, but also the friendship and family connections. I was very invested in these characters, which is never a great idea in a horror story.

I enjoyed the story, but there were parts where I felt really disconnected or not grounded in the scene. Mostly this was when things were happening, so I'm not sure if it was the magic system that needed more clarity, or a bit more narrative grounding to pull the reader into the scene itself. But there were a few parts that I had to re-read a couple of times to figure out what was happening, which is distracting and obviously not ideal.

But overall, it didn't deter from the story itself, which made me feel a lot of different emotions and let out a sigh of relief when I closed that cover. Definitely a worthwhile, creepy little read. Puts a whole new spin on being one with nature.

I really enjoyed the uniqueness of the plot of this story. As a horror lover, I was not disappointed especially with the body horror aspects. I do think this could have been marketed towards the New Adult category though considering the characters are 18+. I appreciate having older characters but I think this could be really good as a new adult book!

I loved this book! It gives off The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater and The Witching Hour by Anne Rice vibes, while being able to stand on its own legs with spooky storytelling and lovable yet complex characters. The plot was great, and I thought the multiple POVs were a great addition to an already enthralling story.

I found Laurel to be an extremely interesting narrator, as she doesn't she away from things that most consider morbid (and therefore fear). Her friend group is also very reminiscent of a found family, which I really liked. The setting of rural Kentucky added another element to the book that was at times frightening (in a good way) and beautiful, depending on how the author chose to portray it. Overall a definite 5-star read for me.

I'm really sorry to report that I didn't mesh with this book, but I appreciate the chance to read the arc and give my honest opinion, because it's not a bad book, and it will work for someone. While I enjoyed the premise of this book, I struggled with it - I think that it peaked around 50% and then it back-tracked and had some plot points that should have come first (and it felt a little slow - I ended up skimming the last 15% because I was struggling to keep my motivation). The characters just didn't click for me at all and found some of the writing repetitive (you will read how putrid things smell every few pages). But, I really liked what the magic was showing and I would have loved more descriptions and exploration of that area!

Wake the Bones
by Elizabeth Kilcoyne
Fantasy YA Horror
ARC NetGalley

Laurel Early, a girl raised by her uncle after her mother dies when she was a baby, drops out of college and goes back home to her life with childhood friends and being a tobacco farmer and taxidermist.

But the devil that courted her mother now wants Laurel. She must find the magic she inherited from her mother to stop the devil before it eats her, the land, and all she loves.

This book started off with introducing the MC, her faults, her fears, and then her friends. The monster that stood in the road was great, but then the story went downhill. It seems from then on the story skipped over things, like details that explained what was going on, and the turmoil events like these would actually create, and they were still not included at the end of the story. Even the dialogue seemed to skip. Instead...

“Yes, we are cool with all of this going on, it's no big deal. That's life out here on the farm. We know it's cursed.”

The internal thoughts of the MC, and even the other characters, were plain, all accepting of the events, and I wouldn't call it a type of denial, it really just seemed as if it wasn't a big deal and they didn't care.

This did not work for me. I was bored, and skimmed most of the last half of the story, hoping something would catch my eye, but now I regret doing that, I should have given up.

Everything in this story had potential, but there wasn't enough substance, descriptions, or explanations. The MC's obsession with being a taxidermist wasn't explained and felt pointless except for making her seem morbid just for the shock value.

2 Stars

This book was so disappointing. I liked the writing, but nothing that happened made any sense. The characters were one-dimensional, and their reactions to everything happening didn't make sense and it seemed like their dynamics with eachother kept changing. The magic didn't make sense and the character being a witch was randomly brought up halfway through the book. It seemed liked the author kept adding in things as she was thinking about them throughout writing the book and never bothered going back through to make sure it made sense.

I honestly don't have much to say about this book because, well, there wasn't much to it. Everything about this story ended up falling flat. By the time I was halfway through the book, barely anything happened.

The plot and world-building aren't very expansive, and it mainly focuses on the small cast of characters - Laurel, Isaac, Garrett, Ricky, and Catherine. Unfortunately, I found none of these characters to be particularly interesting, which of course was a huge issue considering this was character-based. Coupled with the fact that this had a very small and isolated setting, there just wasn't enough going on in this to capture let alone keep my attention.

I also simply wasn't a fan of what direction the story went in as well. I was expecting an atmospheric fantasy horror book, but what I got was some of that hidden behind all of the relationship drama. All in all, this was a swing and a miss for me.

Thank you, NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Wednesday Books for giving me the opportunity to review this in advance. My review will be posted to my blog two weeks before the release date.

I cannot begin to count the ways I loved this novel by Elizabeth Kilcoyne. To begin with, the characters, Laurel and her friends Isaac, Garrett, and Ricky, grab you by the throat and make you care about them immediately. Elizabeth Kilcoyne has built a rich, gripping and gorgeous horror thriller with supernatural elements that will keep you up late at night. She also really captures the character’s love/hate relationship with the town they call home and the lowkey LGBT elements are exquisitely well written. The narrative is deliciously visceral and I love the twists and turns that the author builds into the story. You are never quite sure what to expect or if Laurel and her friends will escape to a better future. 

For me, part of what made this such a brilliant read is the way the story moves. It has a quick pace while seeming to meander but the characters and the action build fast. You immediately empathize with Laurel and then, as you read, Elizabeth Kilcoyne drops tantalizing hints of Laure’s past, Isaac’s or gives you more hints of the dark magic the characters’s face. Nothing is quite what it seems either and even the secondary characters, like Jay and Christine are well written and three dimensional. 

If you like dark, twisted, spooky supernatural horror, I highly recommend this one. It has compelling characters, a beautiful, gripping and gorgeous narrative and the story is engaging from beginning to end. I loved every minute of reading this one.

I was pleased that the contents of this book were just as creepy and atmospheric as its beautiful cover. Kilcoyne masterfully combines the magical and the macabre. Many of the other YA horror novels I've read always hold back a little bit too much, but Kilcoyne does not. There is gore, death, and violence. I could feel the sweltering summer heat and how claustrophobically small Dry Valley was. Kilcoyne without a doubt knows how to write an effective Southern gothic tale.

Laurel is relatable, sympathetic, but also flawed. She tried to escape her rural home but failed after dropping out of college. As someone from the Midwest, I related to her complicated feelings about her hometown. Her anger when she discovers her closest friends might leave her behind felt honest and believable. The romance between Garrett and Isaac was particularly well done.

Christine was very intriguing as well, and I would honestly consider reading a separate novel with her as the protagonist.

My major critique of the book is that the pacing does drag, especially in the first half of the novel. Although I loved the lush descriptions of the farm and woods, it felt like the plot became an afterthought in some of the chapters. I needed things to happen a little faster, and it became too easy to put the book down and not pick it up for days at a time.

I liked the premise of this book a lot. I also really enjoyed the characters, especially the main character who was very developed and who I could see clearly grow and change over the course of the novel. The setting and atmosphere was spooky and atmospheric as promised and I could really visualize it all. Overall I enjoyed it.

Wow, I loved this! Atmospheric, dark, haunting, spooky - it's a perfect little gothic town story and I'll definitely be picking a final copy up for my bookshelves. I loved how completely immersive this story was, and how rich the writing was. I'll also be the first to admit that this was super, super weird - at times, I wasn't sure what was even going on, but the writing was so beautiful that I just kept pushing forward until I found my footing again. I think I'll like this even more when I reread it, which is definitely saying something considering how much I liked it this time around!

This book and it's format / narrative has been covered by others with similar reviews. As someone indicated that they had Raven Boys vibes from this, I can very much agree that if you enjoyed the Raven Boys and the author's odd prose... then you would enjoy this author's prose as well.

While I give the book credit for having a taxidermist main character, and that there is gay representation, there is just a plot that just doesn't have any beats and just kind of meanders and doesn't really allow you to notice or feel what is going on.

I couldn't finish this book due to the fact that the prose was just bothering me. Out of respect of the author, I will not rate it.