Another rough outing for the tropey YA Fantasy parents who bring some ungodly mess down on their unsuspecting kid while bleating “I only lied to protect you!”

Maybe it’s me, but I think if you have some sort of angry supernatural force from your past hanging around and potentially wishing you harm, you miiiihht want to prepare your kids for this possibility rather than locking them in a tower/living on the run/mind wiping them/whatever the strategy for a particular plot is for setting one’s own children up to be uninformed and in terrible danger.

So—surprise!—I didn’t much care for Dana. I didn’t like her much in the first timeline either, but her story itself isn’t bad.

And essentially, that’s what this book is: Not bad. This isn’t nearly as good as the Hazel Wood books (this one is really low on atmosphere and isn’t especially original). But it moves well, the plot itself is fine in a basic sense, and Ivy (if not Dana) makes for a good heroine.

Our Crooked Hearts is a wild tale of teenage witches who make a terrible mistake.

Ivy has grown up knowing that her mother was different. She knew her mother could make things mysteriously happen, but she doesn't know how. When Ivy begins seeing a strange woman and a series of dead rabbits, she begins to investigate her mother's past.

Dana, Fee, and Marion begin dabbling in magic in their late teens and form a small coven. While Dana and Fee play innocently with magic, Marion becomes addicted to it. She seeks ways to make herself stronger and attempt more intense spells. When a ritual goes horribly wrong, Marion disappears and leaves Dana and Fee behind with intense guilt.

Years later, when Ivy begins to see this mysterious woman, Dana realizes her daughter is being drawn into the horrible mistake she made as a teenager. As the magic that has lain dormant begins to unfold, all of the women are thrown into a series of magical events that could change their lives forever.

Our Crooked Hearts is likely targeted to the upper YA crowd of ages 15-20. I feel like I would have enjoyed it more if I were within the intended age bracket. The story weaves itself together well but can be confusing with all of the perspective changes. If we knew at the beginning of each chapter who's POV we were coming from it would be much easier to follow. If you are looking for a more character-driven book, this one is not for you. There isn't much character development for anyone. This book is much more plot-driven. For a YA fantasy, it's actually pretty good. If you like witches, magic, and otherworldly phenomenon, you will probably really enjoy this story. There's also just a hint of romance if that's what you look for in a book. Overall, I would definitely recommend it for a quick, fun read.

I don't read books about witches and the occult, Too creepy for me! But Melissa Albert's novel is so well-written that it drew me into a story I would typically avoid. If you like dark fiction that grabs tight and won't let you go, this is the novel for you.

This was such a unique YA story. It was sharp, dark, and atmospheric. The writing was in-depth and even poetic at times. It read more like an adult fantasy novel even though the characters were YA.

I loved the main character, Ivy, and how her story unfolded as secrets and truths were revealed. This was told in two timelines and the past timeline focused on Ivy’s mom and her secrets.

My only complaint is that the ending seemed a bit rushed. There were a lot of reveals that could have been spaced out better to match the pacing of the rest of the book.

Overall this was such a strong YA fantasy book!

4.5 Stars rounded up

This is hands down my favorite Melissa Albert book, and I really enjoyed The Hazel Wood.
The story zips right along, told in alternating timelines, explaining how Ivy's mom came to be who she is, and how that impacts Ivy today. The magic is interesting, the characters sharp, and the stakes always feel surprisingly real, even when they're of the most fantastical nature. There's also a little romance that doesn't feel forced or awkward, but rather an important part of the the impact of one of the reveals.
The end comes together quickly, almost too quick for me, which felt slightly abrupt. Still, I highly recommend.

3.5 stars rounded up

Witches, dark magic, parental secrets, a fraught mother/daughter relationship....all are central to Our Crooked Hearts. This could probably be compared to The Craft, as a witchy teen story that leans dark.

Told in two timelines, this follows 17 year old Ivy who is experiencing weird things and suspect that her mom holds some dark secrets. It also follows her mom and her group of friends in the 90's as they get into dark and dangerous magic with serious ramifications. (Note that this does include blood magic and animal sacrifice and mutilation involving bunnies)

I can't say I was equally invested in both timelines and toward the end we get a rush of secrets that could have been parsed out a bit more through the book. Occasionally the writing tries to get more poetic to SAY SOMETHING and those bits didn't always work for me and didn't necessarily flow with the rest of the book. That said, I did enjoy the story and I'm liking this trend of darker stories for teens that deal with things like how far you will go to get what you want and the far-reaching consequences that might incur. I think a lot of people will be into this one, but if you don't like horror elements or need your characters to be likable, this may not be for you. I received an advance copy of this book for review via NetGalley, all opinions are my own.

My first book dealing with witchcraft. This was definitely a YA novel and I enjoyed it It was easy to read and entertaining with good character development. Dark and yet relatable I was constantly guessing at what was going to happen next and was not able to predict the ending.

ARC REVIEW]
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Hazelwood Series has always been a revered series for me. When I heard @melissaalbertauthor was coming out with a new book I KNEW I had to get my hands on it. Thanks to @netgalley and @flatironbooks, I was able to read the best #witchy book of 2022.

It was dark and creepy.

There’s family flaws and spells gone wrong.

A very different take on a story of true love.

Add it to your TBR
#ourcrookedhearts hits shelves 6/28

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First, congratulations to author and publisher on this cover choice and book blurb. You’ve hit the sweet spot for a teenage target audience, but I truly enjoyed it myself. The characters were well-developed and the story drew me in.

Part thriller. Part magic. Part coming of age. Our Crooked Hearts is told from the perspective of mother Dana in the past, and her daughter Ivy in the present. The book opens with Ivy and her boyfriend driving home from a party when a naked young woman runs across the road and into the forest. They follow her and Ivy swears she hears the stranger say her name.

Using the dual point-of-view, the story unfolds simultaneously but twenty years apart. The story is layered with dangerous secrets, betrayal and revenge, and the clues are slowly revealed to help us piece together the past and present mysteries. All the characters were morally gray, which kept me wondering exactly who I was rooting for. They all played major roles, with not many side characters to keep track of. The present timeline focuses on Ivy as she investigates the pasts of her mother and aunt, while the other storyline shows us the past as Ivy’s mother, Aunt Fee, and a new friend begin delving into witchcraft.

Albert’s writing is beautiful, showing the universal struggles of being a teenager trying to find a comfortable place in the word, and screwing up every other step. It’s also poetic and creepy, filled with quirky descriptions and thought-provoking similes that this reader went back to re-read, thinking, “wow, this lady can really write. Wish I’d said that.”

For witchcraft fans, the book has some Practical Magic vibes with some extra darkness. Think The Craft, but creepier. If you ever wondered what happened to the characters in that story, Our Crooked Hearts will answer that question. The magic practiced by mother Dana and her little group included some super-bad choices, and every character ends up eventually paying the price. Especially the rabbits.

Ultimately, I’d put this book on the YA shelf, with a note that it’s unusually dark for that category. I’d also recommend for horror fans, more than fantasy readers. It’s a dark, slow-burn mystery that will suck you into the supernatural story in the best possible way.

Thank you NetGalley for making an advance copy available in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

Another amazing book from Melissa Albert! Ivy and Dana were excellent main characters. The pacing was excellent and left me guessing.

Our Crooked Hearts was fast paced and I didn't want to put it down. It felt like the it was only ramping up and it never came down in anticipation. I enjoyed the mother daughter relationship which felt real. Melissa Albert kept you on the edge without making the story predictable. I would highly recommend this to all those who enjoy being sucked into the void of a great book.

"Secrets. Lies. Super-bad choices. Witchcraft. This is Our Crooked Hearts, a darkly gripping contemporary fantasy from Melissa Albert, the New York Times bestselling author of The Hazel Wood.

The suburbs, right now...
Seventeen-year-old Ivy’s summer break kicks off with an accident, a punishment, and a mystery: a stranger whose appearance in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, heralds a string of increasingly unsettling events. As the days pass, Ivy grapples with eerie offerings, corroded memories, and a secret she’s always known - that there's more to her mother than meets the eye.

The city, back then...
Dana has always been perceptive. And the summer she turns sixteen, with the help of her best friend and an ambitious older girl, her gifts bloom into a heady fling with the supernatural. As the trio’s aspirations darken, they find themselves speeding toward a violent breaking point.

Years after it began, Ivy and Dana's shared story will come down to a reckoning among a daughter, a mother, and the dark forces they never should've messed with."

I'm always here for witchcraft and super-bad choices!

This story follows “Right now” and “Back then”. “Right now” is Ivy, a seventeen year old who is discovering her mother has unusual secrets that sometimes involve what one could call magic. “Back then” is Ivy’s mom and Aunt Fee, fifteen year olds with a knack for the unusual, discovering a world with magic for both good and bad.

I loved the pacing of this novel — how the two story lines knit themselves together. That pacing created the push to binge read and learn how the stories connect. Each new bit of connection made the novel that much more tantalizing. I also really enjoyed the underlining thread of trust, want, insecurity & family. The characters were all very real in their behaviors which only added to the ease of immersion into the novel. 5 stars. Would recommend to anyone who enjoys a story about family and doesn’t mind a bit of supernatural mixed in.

Review based on an Uncorrected Digital Galley provided by Flatiron Books and NetGalley. Thank you!

I had the opportunity to meet and listen to Melissa Albert at the North Texas Teen Book Festival, and I could tell right away that she was a good, genuine person. Just listening to her, I was interested in her stories. At the festival I purchased The Hazelwood and The Night Country, and wrote down the name of this book so I could pre-order. When I saw it available on NetGalley, I took the opportunity to read this book and see if it is something my students and I would enjoy. It is a fantastic YA book and one I will highly recommend to my students and my friends.

In this story, we are reading about present day Ivy and the past life of her mother, Dana. From the very first chapter you are hooked when Nate and Ivy almost run over a naked, pale woman. This woman says Ivy's name like she knows her. From there, little things happen that open Ivy's eyes to what has been in front of her her entire life.

The way the story unfolds forward and backward is not necessarily unique, but its timing and how perfected it is shows brilliance on the author and her editors parts. I love how witchcraft is portrayed, and I haven't seen a good witchy book in a while! The mysteriousness of everything keeps you turning pages, and I kept telling myself "ok when it goes back to the past I'm going to put it down" "ok when it goes to the next point of view I am pointing it down". I couldn't! I ended up reading it in one sitting. The plot and the writing style isn't all that is going for this book. The characters and their relationships make you want to continue reading to see how they develop and where the story will take them.

4.5 stars

This book kept me on the edge of my seat. It was really intense in places, and I really wasn't sure what to expect.

The story is told via two different timelines, one of Ivy in the "present" and one of Ivy's mother in her past (when she was roughly Ivy's age). It deals with relationships between friends and between mothers and daughters, especially the choices a mother might make in doing what she thinks will best protect her daughter.

I found both timelines to be compelling and the back and forth between the two was well-balanced. The adult Dana is more understandable because of what teenage Dana went through, though she really did not make the best decisions. There were moments of heartbreak and moments of hope. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Thank you so much #NetGalley for allowing me to read ARC!
If you like dual point of views, uncovering past secrets, creepy vibes, magic, with a little cute romance then this is a book for you. In this book you get two points of view and dual timelines between a mother and daughter. There were times at first where I did get confused when they switched point of views. It could have been that it was just an eBook format.
I loved her writing style in general and through out the book there were a few words I wanted to take with me.
“This was how it began. Food and music. The rest of it came later: the magic, the things that fueled it.”
“Blood. Fresh enough to be wet. Too big for a nosebleed, too small to start looking for a body”
“She was looking at us like a cook considering her kitchen”
“I think we really believed that love could work that way. That we could hold each other fast to the surface of the spinning world.”
Overall, I enjoyed the read of Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert. This is something I would read again (probably in October).

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Going into this book, I thought it would be a lot creepier than it turned out to be (the lack of true creepiness is not a bad thing here). This may be because I've become desensitized to creepiness and horror lately, though, so take that statement with a grain of salt?

That aside, I adored this book. The magic was fun and wild, the romance was adorable, and the plot was fast-paced and intriguing. I would say I definitely loved this book more than the author's The Hazel Wood, which was a book I enjoyed, but wasn't as memorable.

4.5 Stars.

This book. So much love. Our Crooked Hearts is in the running for my favourite book of the year so far.

I went into this one knowing nothing except that I’d liked Melissa Albert’s previous work (the Hazel Wood series). It’s a good one to experience without reading much in advance.

The basic setup is that Our Crooked Hearts follows Ivy, a teenaged girl in a modern suburb, and in an earlier timeline Dana, her mother, at age seventeen. In the first chapter, Ivy nearly hits a naked woman with her car — a mysterious woman who she realizes might be following her and stalking her mother.

Our Crooked Hearts is about witchcraft, magic, femininity, family, memory, and love. It’s a coming-of-age story, fantasy with a dash of horror, that asks: How much does a person’s memory shape their identity? How far can you go to protect someone you love, before you’re actually harming them? And what can you forgive?

Albert’s writing is equal parts beautiful, haunting, and witty. She wields metaphors like razors and plays (especially in the second half of the novel) with tense and point of view in a way that’s disarming and illuminating.

I loved everything about this book, and it’s one I know I’ll read more than once.

I’d especially recommend Our Crooked Hearts for fans of Claire Legrand, Laini Taylor, and Libba Bray.

Thank you to Flatiron Books for my review copy of Our Crooked Hearts.

Provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Looking for something witchy and weird? Look no further! This book has all the witchy factors I love: vengeful witches, magic gone wrong, magical items, and covens. It would be a wonderful book to read around Halloween.

This book was a wild ride. It features a dual timeline, one following a modern day teenager, and one from years ago following her mother who is a witch. This book focuses on a mistake that the mother made when she was young, and how that mistake affects her and her daughter many years later.


The plot of this book is interesting and will keep you reading long after you should have gone to bed. There is a mystery aspect to this book, with a small plot twist that might surprise you. Though I was busy moving into a new house while reading this book, I could not stop wanting to read this book at all hours of the day.

I was so glad to have loved this book. Melissa Albert's the Hazel Wood is one of my favorite YA series, and I'm glad to know that I will continue to read anything she writes.

This book comes out June 28th for anyone who would like to pick up a copy!

The concept and writing in this book were really enjoyable. I was drawn in by the cover and the title without really looking too much into the story (I know it was Witchy vibes). The plot, pacing, and overall storytelling was really nice. Really cool to get the two sides of the story coming together at the end.

My biggest problem with the book was the characters. I felt like most of them didn't have enough depth. I am a character-driven reader, all my favorite books have to have notable characters and this one just didn't. I was really hoping to get more from Ivy in the second/third part but I didn't.

I also had spelling mistakes/missing words that bothered me occasionally and pulled me out of the story for a moment but nothing another round of editing can't fix!