Wow this was so good! I loved everything about this book, from the detailed social complexities, the slow-burn (+no cringey sexual scenes - thank you!) romance, to the urban-witch vibes.
I often have a really difficult time reading texts with characters who have a traumatic past/present in relation to violence/addiction/substance abuse/"bad" choices/economic circumstances etc. because they are too often written in a way that, in my own personal opinion, doesn't speak true to what it is like to live through it. While of course fiction does not have to align with the real world, it still frustrates me to the point that I DNF books when it happens. However, Our Crooked Hearts presents some of these difficult topics in a way that makes me feel safe, as silly as that may sound. There's no romanticizing, no glorifying, and most importantly, no black and white picture of good and evil. So again, THANK YOU MELISSA ALBERT for writing a story that makes sense, that's relatable to people who have also made big and traumatic choices they regret, and calls into question the very definition of choice.

This book was not what I was anticipating, but what a gripping story filled with witchcraft and family secrets!

Our story focuses on Ivy, a seventeen year old girl who is struggling with the decision to break up with her boyfriend. In the middle of the night they stumble upon a nude woman in the woods and this is where things start to get weird!

Ivy begins to notice things in her life aren’t what they seem, and everything she thought she knew, may not be the whole truth.

This book was creepy, intriguing, thrilling, and I loved the duel perspectives with the two timelines.

We go back and forth between Ivy (in the Suburbs, now) and Dana (her mother in the city, then). I loved this duel perspective and the slow burn of the story unfolding. At times I became so invested in Dana’s story because she is doing some things 👀👀.

This story revolves around witchcraft, but also on the secrets parents keep. I was struck by the life Dana lived that Ivy had no idea of, and the way this story was told with the gradual unfolding really pushed to me that children really never fully know their parents.

TW for animal death, we are dealing with magic here and deaths of animals (rabbits specifically) occur throughout the book.

I highly recommend to anyone who enjoyed a thrilling, creepy, witchy tale!

I listened on audio and loved the two narrators for this duel perspective story.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I received an ARC audiobook from Netgalley and wow wow wow, what a roller coaster this was!! Our Crooked Hearts is a perfect combo of creepy and fantasy. I really enjoyed the alternating time periods and POVs to build on the story.

Loved this one! Such a unique and fast-paced story with some awesome elements mixed in such as summoning dark forces, a haunted library, strained mother daughter relationships, witches, and an underlying tone of revenge. I was immediately pulled in by both POV's of Ivy and Dana, and loved getting to get the background of Dana's magic and how the dark forces that linger in the present were caused by her and her coven back when they were teens. There were so many dark elements woven in throughout this story that I found myself questioning if it was really considered YA or adult. Each chapter usually ended with a cliff-hanger and I was desperate to get back to their POV to find out what would happen!

I completely flew through the first part and was finding any excuse to keep listening, but the slight changes in the second and third half threw me off just a bit. I found myself getting confused in the second part and not really being able to follow as well as the first, but it definitely pulled together more in the third part. This may VERY well be a user error though so I'm not letting it affect my overall rating too much.

This was a fantastic YA fantasy mystery bordering on adult, and I completely devoured the audiobook in just a few days. Melissa Albert's writing is immersive, lyrical, and immaculately executed. I think both YA and adult fiction lovers should definitely this one up when it publishes June 28th! Thank you again to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for my audiobook review copy.

This book didn't do much for me unfortunately. Audiobooks are helpful when I struggle to get through a book but even with the audiobook, I couldn't care about the story itself. The audiobook was fine, I didn't have any issues with the narrators or the voices.

This book hands down has been one of the most marketed books I’ve seen on social networking over the last few months, so I was really excited to see it was on NetGalley and to be approved for an advance listening copy. I went in blind, not knowing what to expect except maybe something about rabbits, judging by the cover.

Animal abuse is definitely a TW for this book. I got a little uncomfortable with all the dead animals and at some points descriptive slaughter of them to advance the plot.

It took me until 20% to kinda figure out what was going on because the story shifts between the perspectives of Ivy (daughter) and Dana (mother), clearly different narrators, and “back then” vs “now” as well as changes location. There are also a lot of other characters with odd names to keep track of - some of which I still don’t remember who they were or what their role in the story was. I got through the audiobook very slow because I often had to pause a lot and rack my brain about what was going on and who was who. This is definitely one that you need to pay attention to instead of listen while completing other tasks.

Dana was a practicing witch that belonged to a coven that had a falling out and banned their sister witch to hell and Dana now has a daughter named Ivy who could also do magic but Dana reluctantly erased her memory to protect her until the sister witch returns from hell to reek havoc andddd… that was basically it for the plot. The climax wasn’t until about 90% in. It was just alright. Definitely YA vibes. Not as spooky or thrilling as I’d hoped when I learned what the premise was. Not my cup of tea but others might enjoy if this is their preferred genre.

Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and the author for an advance listener’s copy in exchange for an honest review!

Unfortunately, I was disappointed in this audiobook on many counts. 1) I disliked the narrator's voices for this book, which can really make or break a book that you are only listening to aloud, but more importantly 2) the plot and order of storytelling weren't great, in my opinion and 3) I truly did not like the amount of times a dead animal (mostly rabbit) was mentioned; especially, the actual act of killing. I listened to the whole thing out of curiosity of what would happen, so there was enough appeal for that and two stars, but it was otherwise a disappointing read for me. I was really hoping to enjoy it, because I thought it sounded like something I would enjoy. Thank you still, though, for the early opportunity to read and review!

Oh what a plot!
Back then -
Dana and her friends stumble into the occult -in possession of an occultist's, Astrid, journal of spells and more. And Astrid has plans for these three friends - including finding their fourth. Marion studies the journal, forming a close connection to Astrid - who is desperate to re-enter the world.
Right Now (love the urgency of phrase)
Ivy attends a party with her boyfriend - only to find a young woman, nude in a lake. She promises they will meet again. Her mother and aunt disappear somewhere, leaving Ivy wondering what is going on. Ivy finds a safe tucked away in a closet - holding some of her most cherished possessions from childhood. And so Ivy's life starts to unravel.
Great dual timelines, creative plot. Love the narration of the story. Kept me interested if somewhat confused as the story unfolded.

Our Crooked Hearts
I loved this book! Dark Magic and family drama make Our Crooked Hearts a great witchy fantasy read.

Ivy is in a car accident after a party. Her mom, Dana, grounds Ivy for putting herself at risk by riding with a drunk friend. What Dana doesn’t know is there was a girl in the middle of the road that night. Ivy tries to find out more about the girl and ends up finding things about her mother’s past and her own.

This story shifts between Ivy and Dana’s POV across multiple timelines. This could have been tricky for the reader, but Albert executed it perfectly. Ivy and Dana’s stories both are filled with mystery and kept me intrigued the whole time.

I am so glad Netgalley let me experience this one in advance for an honest review.

This review has been posted on Goodreads and instagram.

*RELEASE DATE: June 28TH!*

This is a very atmospheric book and I really enjoyed it for that main reason. It's very witchy and has creepy elements for sure! A perfect late-summer read for when you're missing (and/or anticipating) spooky season.

As with most multiple-POV series, readers tend to enjoy one POV more than the others and this was definitely the case for me with this book. I really liked Ivy's perspective and felt it was more action-packed and interesting- with a better voice as well. Dana's was interesting and obviously important for the entire background of the story, but the voice was really dry and those chapters really seemed to drag on. I wish the book as a whole was a little bit shorter. I feel like there were certain elements that went on for too long unnecessarily, but then there were some other areas I wish we had more time on. I really think the book could do with cutting 30-some pages and making each chapter more direct. It's not that it's slow-burn, because it isn't at all (action starts RIGHT AWAY!), it's just that it went on longer than it needed to in some parts and could have collectively been more thrilling.

While the pacing and writing were sometimes a bit of a drag, I did find the plot itself really intriguing. I was super keen to figure out what was going on and where our characters were going to end up next. I'll admit that I kept forgetting this was YA, so I was definitely waiting for more gory action to come, but it's appropriate for the age range it's aimed towards! There were definitely spooky parts that creeped me out and made my skin crawl, but it wasn't anything too crazy at the same time. A really good middle ground.

I also think an issue I had with this book is that I feel like I've read it before. It kind of went along with every other YA witchy book I've ever read. It wasn't anything super original and it didn't do anything for me to make it stand out among the others in its specific genre. It just fits perfectly alongside them all. I think I honestly liked The Hazel Wood better just because it was more original and was like nothing I had ever read before. I also think it was a bit more creepy than this one and there weren't as many lulls in the story. I'll still definitely pick up whatever Melissa Albert comes out with in the future though. This one didn't throw me off by any means. It was just... mid!

Thank you sooo much to NetGalley for audio ARC and to Macmillan for a physical ARC. All thoughts and opinions are, as always, my very own.

Witchcraft past and present really collide, making this book feel dark and creepy.

This book takes place in present times to tell Ivy's perspective and in the past during when her mother Dana was young. I liked that the two timeline were clearly defined and identified which made this book flow with ease. I also liked the details this book brings to explain the magic. I also got the sense easily from the characters when magic turned too dark when taken to far.

The complicated mother/daughter relationship helped bring some depth to this book and kept it from getting too dark. I enjoyed this book and liked that it was a bit different from books I normally read.

Thank you to MacMillan Audio and Netgalley for providing me a copy of this Audiobook for my honest review.

Rating: 2.13 leaves out of 5
-Characters: 2/5
-Cover: 5/5
-Story: 0.5/5
-Writing: 1/5
Genre: Fantasy/Historical Fiction
Type: Audiobook
Worth?: Yeah

Want to thank Netgalley and publishers for giving me the chance to listen to this book. What a disappoint. The beginning was creepy and sucked you in. If the whole book was just the mother's view I would have rated it higher. I feel bad for even comparing it to The Craft. Actually this book sucked so hard you could say it was like the sequel. Both were utter trash. It started out so strong and fizzled into a shit pile, and that is putting it nicely.

I know I rated it a 2.13 but I am rounding down to a 1. The cover is gorgeous but the story is utter trash and it doesn't deserve even a 2.

******SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT DOWN******


Ivy, which I hate to share a name with, is a self-centered brat. She is a good reason why having a kid sounds horrible. Ivy is a brat who thinks of herself over others. Instead of letting her mother explained she ended up just being a grade A Bitch about EVERYTHING. Even till the end when she shared the same guilt as her mom. I get the whole wanting your mom to feel proud of you and the like but at the end of the day if you can't even admit to her being right to a certain degree you are a child and should be treated as such.

And this is why I don't do YA's because 9/10 the main character is Mary Sue/ Gary Stu.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow when one of your most anticipated reads of the year underwhelms, a sentiment I unfortunately have to share about Melissa Albert’s standalone YA fantasy Our Crooked Hearts. Albert is an author I have enormous expectations for at every release, as her debut novel in 2018 was my exact flavor of fairytale-esque fantasy with a dark twist, combined with the most beautiful prose I’d seen from a debut author. She takes a bit of a different direction with this latest book, veering more into urban fantasy, with the familiar throughline of an abrasive relationship between mother and daughter. The former of which has suddenly gone missing at the start of the novel.

To start, the use of dual timelines here was an underutilized narrative choice, made even more distracting by the nearly interchangeable voices of mother and daughter. The amount of overlap between the characters that were in both timelines only confused things further, and I found myself having to take a moment to pause and re-orient myself in the story to get a sense of where and when I was. Neither Ivy nor her mother ever felt like totally realized characters to me, just mouthpieces for two young girls discovering urban magic in two separate timelines. And while the looming mystery of what presence was stalking Ivy in her present day storyline added some intrigue here, I wouldn’t have missed the POV swapping to her mother’s timeline in the past and her girlgang shenanigans.

These Crooked Hearts could have been a more powerful story if it had focused entirely on the tumultuous relationship between mother and daughter, and the mystery of Marion. Having to shoehorn in a romance subplot with the neighbor boy Billy felt a bit like a piece of obligatory YA marketing. He could have not existed at all, or simply been a friend, and the story itself would fundamentally have been the same. Just without the distracting presence of a romance that really should not have taken center stage with a missing mother on the loose. And, you know, the life-altering discovery that the dark workings of modern-day witches were real.

I’ve yet to recapture that same magic from Melissa Albert’s debut with The Hazel Wood, regardless of her prose absolutely delivering in all four books she’s released thus far. As such, she’s an author I will continue to pick up everything she writes, because I feel she’s still there on the precipice of writing something back in my happy place of eerie fairytales and forests that swallow their inhabitants whole. Unfortunately, this latest release leaning more into urban fantasy didn’t quite deliver in this regard, but I think there’s a reader for it regardless.

Thank you to the publisher Flatiron books for providing an ARC via NetGalley for an honest review.

This is the first book I have read by the author and I really loved it. I love the witchy vibes and how it reminded me of the movie The Craft from time to time. It kept me on my edge of my seat and gave off a bit of a thriller vibe.

This book speaks to my soul! It's as if the girls from The Craft (yes, I"m dating myself) grew up, had a kid, and the story continued. Be still my little witchy 15 year old heart!

I received the audiobook from NetGalley in exchange for my review.

17 year old Ivy is in trouble - out too late, getting into a car with her drunk ex-boyfriend, yet there still seems to be more to the punishment. Could it have something to do with the stranger who appeared in the middle of street on said car ride? Dana, her mother, has always been aloof - even back to her teenage days when she became part of a trio exploring magic. Years later, will it all come back to bite both of them?

There were so many things I loved about this book - dual timeline, Chicago area setting, creepy witches, and dumb teenagers. The audio was great and did a good job shifting between Ivy and Dana. The story itself was complex, intriguing, well developed and had great characters that I felt had lots of layers. While the book is YA, it will appeal to readers of all ages and is definitely worth the read!

This book was interesting. I loved the writing of it so much. I thought the whole atmosphere was interesting as well. So good.

I’m a fan of Melissa Albert, so when I first heard about Our Crooked Hearts I was immediately excited. The story of a mother and daughter with a strained relationship due to secrets, those secrets revealed over a dual timeline, and magic?! So, when I saw the ARC on Netgalley I had to put in a request not thinking I’d actually be approved. But to my surprise I was and I quickly settled down to listen to the audiobook.

Our Crooked Hearts blends together very real life drama with magic and mystery to create a contemporary fiction bound together by mystery and magic. I loved the mixture of fantasy magic weaved into real life magick. As someone who studies witchcraft I enjoyed this combination and the nods to real life practitioners, but I was also able to separate the very clear fantastical elements used.

The characters are multifaceted and their decisions and choices even more so. Ivy and her mother, Dana, are two sides of the same coin yet fundamentally different individuals due to their backgrounds and upbringings.

The compelling , beautiful parallels between mother and daughter are illustrated well throughout the dual timeline and points of view. And the fast paced plot makes for a story that is hard to put down.

Dark urban magickal fiction is a genre that Albert does incredibly well. First with the Hazel Wood books and now with Our Crooked Hearts. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys YA stories with drama and that leans heavily into secrets being revealed as you read.

I'd seen a couple of wonderful reviews of this book on Instagram and I was so intrigued by the synopsis, so I requested the audiobook ARC. The narrators are both wonderful and expressive and their voices are a beautiful backdrop to the story. They're never distracting or annoying; they allow you to really absorb everything going on.

The story itself was even better than I expected! Sometimes YA novels are a bit simpler and less complex, but Our Crooked Hearts is far from simple; it's clever, creepy, and everything weaves together so well. I love YA novels but I've seen a lot of reader friends who steer clear of YA. I would honestly recommend this to anyone looking for a great and creepy story - don't let the "YA" on this put you off!

One thing I will say, in case you're hyper sensitive to animal triggers like I am, this does have a LOT of animal cruelty/animal death in it. Most of it isn't detailed or gratuitous but one scene in particular is fairly graphic. However, if you're able to push through, I think it's worth it for the story.

Melissa Albert is back with what I personally think is her strongest offering yet! If you have read her worlds before you will instantly recognize her dark and matter of fact approach. Our Crooked Hearts amps up the character development and story telling in a masterful way. As a result I think this will work for past fans AND folks who might not have loved The Hazel Wood.

Our Crooked Hearts is a duel perspective, converging timeline story that could be categorized as slow burn and yet I never felt bored. Albert takes her time introducing us to all the small nuances of these characters and the plot is better for it. You'll primarily follow Ivy, a seventeen year old who after experiencing a string of mysterious and chilling events starts to question everything she knows about her life. The other perspective follows Ivy's Mother, in the past, as begins to dabble in the world of the supernatural.

Part coming of age story, part love letter to mother-daughter relationships, Our Crooked Hearts tugs at heartstrings while serving up some seriously chilling and masterful atmosphere. This story may takes it's time but the emotional connection you feel to these characters because of it is both intense and thought provoking.

I listen to this and found that I adored one of the narrators and felt dissatisfied by the other. It felt jarring to go from one to another. I would recommend listening to a preview before grabbing the audio version.

Endless Thanks to NetGalley and FlatIron Books for the review copy.

4.5 stars. Very enjoyable, witchy story. The author is very talented at writing dysfunctional family situations.