I don't know what exactly a 90s gothic vampire novel is like, but if I had to say, it would be exactly this. Like although I didn't exactly love the plot of this, for some reason I enjoyed the vibe of this book. Like it was a very clear, cut and dry vampire story, nothing crazy happened (or like, nothing at all really happened) but it wasss so creepy and atmospheric. Like the caterpillars, the butterflies, the vampires weirdly and randomly being in this church. I feel like I missed something, though, and it was supposed to be more symbolic or a nod to 90s horror or something because it felttt deep and creepy but I can't say I particularly was excited by this. But I LOVED the beginning with the bloody rain and bugs and her sister missing, and the vampire calling her. I really wish we lived in that more before going to visit the vampire. I loved the beginning, the middle draggeddddd but then the end happened really fast and I was very into perfect Fiona being a vampire and her sister being the one to kill her.

"Direwood" began alright and it quickly descended into the type of creature story that could not keep my interest. This was a story of a pair of sisters. One older and seemingly perfect who goes missing, and the other doing what she can to hold her family together and find out what happened to her sibling. There are monsters and there are bizarre "acts of nature" and there is twisted infatuation... and all of that sounds like a lot of other stories I have read. Even though it was original in certain aspects of the tale, there were too many pitfalls for me to be engrossed in it. This book was not for me, but it is not a bad book.

I just read a short blurb about the book because I prefer to be surprised, so I went into it only knowing that it was a gothic horror YA book set in the 90’s. That sounded really appealing to me, so I was really excited to read it. It was different than I anticipated, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
I was however a little disappointed that the 90’s theme only contributed to a small portion of the book. In the beginning, there were references to cliché 90’s things like Beanie Babies and celebrities I’m not familiar with. I’m honestly not sure why it was set in the 90’s, I felt like it was a throwaway factor in the story, and wish more had been done with it.
I also was not expecting the monsters to be vampires; I was thinking something more along the lines of ghosts or so on. When it seemed like the MC, Aja, was falling for the male vampire, Padraic, I admit I rolled my eyes. “Yet another vampire romance,” I thought. But it ended up not quite going that direction and I enjoyed and appreciated that.
I really liked the character, Mary, who was Aja’s best friend. I got queer vibes from her, and felt like she liked Aja romantically, but that didn’t pan out. I feel like that would have rounded out the story a bit more, but her friendship and loyalty to Aja was sweet.
I also liked the vibe of the book. It was very unique, and had a bit of scary elements without being too disturbing. This book was really easy for me to get through, and I liked the narrator; she had a very soothing voice. Overall, I felt it was an enjoyable read!

This is a unique young adult horror following teenager Aja, to whom strange things begin happening, all leading up to her older sister's disappearance. It isn't long after her sister goes missing that a charming vampire shows up at Aja's window, ready to whisk her away into the night, much like she believes happened to her sister. What Aja doesn't expect is the humanity she seems to find in the vampire, Padraic, despite all of his evil actions, he does not seem to be a standard villain.

I really enjoyed this one, it was very descriptive and quite creepy at times, I'd definitely recommend it to any and all fans of YA supernatural horror.

This book truly kind of gave me the willies. When Aja's sister that everyone loves goes missing, strange things start happening. To me, this is a one of a kind dark vampire story that I would read over and over again. Or listen to over and over again.

It wasn't what I was expecting, but that's not really the fault of the book. It was just a bit of a let down, and that was compacted by the lack of character building.
A number of times I felt like I had missed entire chunks of story, had no idea what was happening or how we got to this point and not in a way that might slowly unfold. But in a poor story telling way.
It sucks because this had so much potential even into the final pages. So much I loved and could have loved about it. But it just never delivered.
I also don't understand why this had the 1990's setting pushed so much when it was so not an aspect of the story. This book could have literally taken place yesterday, and every pop culture reference that reminded me the time period was more jarring than fun because nothing else anchored it to the 90's. Yet it was so much a part of the marketing.

This book seemed like a great spooky read for the fall season, but unfortunately I don't think it was executed particularly well. The gothic horror vibes were there, along with the body horror, but the constant repetition of the caterpillars burrowing inside of flesh confused me. Caterpillars were a byproduct of vampirism, but it wasn't explained any more than that in the end. I haven't figured out if this was meant to represent metamorphosis? If that's the case, the main character, Aja, did not go through any character development that I could tell. She starts off incredibly bitter and resentful of other girls, including her perfect sister, and this remains constant in the book. She demands to be the hero at the end and claims that she's 'so much stronger now' but we were not shown what growths she had gone through. Even after the conclusion of her sister's story, she wants to tell Fiona that she forgives her, but I don't know what wrong Fiona has committed in the first place. If anything, Aja needs to apologize for being so self-centered. There was no grief for her sister either. Her entire motive for making the deal with the vampire was to find her sister but there was no satisfying conclusion to this. If anything, she mourned the vampire "love interest" more than Fiona which is infinitely more upsetting to me. It was difficult for me to root for Aja; her constant depiction of herself as the victim and negative outlook on herself seemed more of a cry for attention and pity than the beginning of the journey for self acceptance. I love reading about characters who start off as the underdog, but Aja's hatred for herself but still displaying superiority over other girls was not a good look.

Another great book to start out spooky season!

This gothic-horror was a creepy young adult vampire story. The whole story is told with a mist, a heavy fog washing over you as you try to sort out what type of vampires these are. I love when you just don't know if they are good or bad… How is it going to swing? What are they going to do?

The moths were quite creepy, just like the cover, and I may never thinking about them in the same light again… This was such a great story between the mystique, darkness and a feeling of a spell cast over the whole story really drew me in.

I really wanted to like this book 😭😭😭 I haven’t read a vampire book in YEARS and I only just recently started getting into audiobooks (though I admit I am still picky) but this … just wasn’t it for me :( This read very much like early 2010 fantasy romance books so if that’s your jam you might really like this!!! I understand that this is this authors debut novel and for that I can appreciate the stylistic choices within her imagery and word choice (especially when it came to the body gore) however, one of the biggest issues I had with this book was the repetitiveness and the constant telling rather than showing. 💔 When the book ended I felt like I was left with more questions than answers. The characters while feeling for the most part pretty one dimensional (including our FMC AND MMC) I wanted and needed to know more about Padraic and Kate. Who were they before? Why were they the way they were? What made them choose Aja’s little hometown? There were constant references to memories resurfacing for Padraic but we didn’t get anything save for the mention of green hills, a river, and music. While I appreciate the author didn’t give the traditional ending I feel … I would have liked there to have been more build up with our FMC and MMC’s romance. The manipulation and power dynamic that tends to go hand in hand with vampire x human relationships just wasn’t present here and I would have liked to have just seen any kind of chemistry between them. The last 15% of this book definitely hooked me in terms of I felt like I really did need closure … but by the end of it I don’t think I really feel that satisfied. I think I definitely would try another book by this author in the future but I would love to see more character development, less repetition with phrases (the mention of black eyes, caterpillars and their white engorged bodies, how hot Padraic is, how much she hates her best friend, how much she resents her sister, etc) and perhaps a bit more focus on pacing and showing vs telling. It’s definitely not a one star read. I think it just needs some tuning and a deep dive into characters and their motivations. Am I glad I gave it a chance and finished it? Yes. Would I read it again? Probably not. Special thanks to Netgalley and Page Street Publishing for the ARC in exchange for my honest review xx 2 stars. ⭐️⭐️

This will be the perfect fall/spooky time read for YA readers.
There are vampires, kidnapped girls, missing sisters, and infatuation with said vampires. Of course, they have that alluring thing that really makes a gal fall for them.

For me as a 30 year old, this story felt a little young for me to enjoy to its fullest potential. The story dragged on slowly for me in many parts. Not because of the authors writing, just because of how young and naive the characters were.

So while I highly recommend this to my younger crowd, I would not recommend it to my older crowd.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for early access to this audio book in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars rounded up.

As much as I wanted to love this book, it just didn’t work for me unfortunately.
While I found Aja a bit impulsive I thought she was still a well rounded character. The story just dragged for me and it didn’t capture my attention the entire time. While I did listen to the audiobook narrated by, Cindy Kay the narrators voice was unable to keep me engaged.
I found this book to be perfect for fans of horror and gothic. The twist of the butterflies will forever be engrained in my mind as such.

Special thanks to Netgalley and Tantor Audio for the ALC.

Before I start my review, can I just say I wish Cindy Kay would narrate every audio book I get! I loved her narration of “Direwood,” and her calming voice almost had me feeling like I was in a fever dream!

“Direwood” is categorized as YA, but to me it’s truly a Horror book. There is so much bug and body horror, it even made me queasy at times!

Set in a small town, the book centers around Aja, a teenage girl who doesn’t fit in and no one really pays attention to until her sister goes missing. After her sister goes missing Aja starts to notice strange things happen in her town, which lead to a vampire visiting her at night. Though Aja knows she shouldn’t leave with this vampire, she can’t help but become enthralled with him, and agrees to leave her house to live with him for 7 days. At the end of those days, she is free to leave if she wants.

While this book starts slowly to me, the pacing picked up at the end. It’s by no means a page turner, but an atmospheric, horror story about my favorite monster- vampires! This book is perfect to read during Halloween! Thanks to NetGalley, and the publisher, for allowing me to listen to this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this, I mean look at the cover it’s stunning.

This was pitched as a 90s noir vampire story, but really it’s not either of those things. It’s more of bratty teenage angst with generic plot.

The 90s setting wasn’t that immersive, i was a kid in the 90s and you can’t just throw in a couple references to corded phones and dial up internet and call it good.

The main character is a younger sister of the the classic perfect older sister, and she’s the rebellious “punk” girl, after the older ones 16th birthday she disappears and a fog engulfs the town. The younger sister goes to find her sister but finds vampires instead, vague plot happens from there. It was pretty boring.

It wasn’t really scary or atmospheric to me, i probably would have DNF’d if it wasn’t for Cindy Kay’s great narration it was the only thing keeping me in the story.

I hope some others enjoy it more than I did.

Thanks to Netgalley and Tantor Audio for providing me with a chance to get in on this book early. I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I received this book, Direwood by Catherine Yu, from Net Galley as an audiobook for an honest review. This was not for me. Maybe if is read the book, but as an audio? It didn't interest me at all. I actually feel like I just wasted the time to listen to it.

This book seemed perfect for me so I was so excited to receive and ARC, but ultimately I think it relied a lot on vibes and didn’t do much else.

The characters, human and vampire alike, didn’t seem to have any real growth or change, and their motivations were all over the place. The thought circles and actions were so repetitive that by the end of the book I barely cared what happened to anyone.

While the vibes were immaculate- beautiful mean vampires, dark forests, a bunch of disgusting butterfly stuff that I really enjoyed- ultimately the ambiance wasn’t enough to make up for the cyclical plot and lack of character development. The resolution was fairly lacking and felt tacked on.

If you’re in this for cool horror elements, the vampirism and it’s connection to caterpillars, butterflies, and nature was really interesting and generally pretty well done. The horror aspects were the best part of the book. I wish I could have cared more about the characters and their motivations to really help the horror elements sink in.

Direwood by Catherine Yu

Aja has always lived in her sister, Fiona's, shadow. Everything Fiona does and says is perfect in the eyes of their father and suffocating town. When Fiona goes missing and Aja starts getting haunted by a mysterious voice outside her window, she turns to the misty forest for answers. What she finds both disgusts and intrigues her.

Direwood has one of the best opening chapters that I have read in awhile.
The imagery was immediately captivating and haunting. Nothing quite like blood rain to set the scene for a spooky season read. There were parts in the middle that felt overextended, but overall I was hooked on the novel's creepy premise.

While I didn't love Aja's character, I do feel like she grew throughout the story. Aja and Fiona's relationship was fleshed out well, but her friendship with Mary could have been explored more. I felt there was a lot of potential that went unexplored.

Cindy Kay was an splendid choice for this book. She brought dimension to the story that significantly added to the experience.

I have already recommended Direwood to several people and will continue to do so. It disgusted and delighted me in equal measures.

Vibes: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia/The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black

Plot - 4
Writing and Editing - 5
Character Development - 4
Narration - 5
Personal Bias - 4
Final Score - 4.4

3.5/5 ✨s

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this advanced audio copy of Direwood in exchange for an honest review.

I did like the audio narrator and enjoyed her reading this book. No complaints there. Again however I find that while listening to this audio in the app that x2 speed echos the audio. It also was doing it at some parts at x1.7 speed as well. I finished listening to the book in 1.7 speed. Other then that if you are not trying to speed up the audio too much there isn’t a weird audio echo.

So the premise of vampires drew me in. I love a good vampire story. I will say the story of discovering vampire live in town comes pretty quickly and the characters choice to join him is pretty quick. Although she has a alternative motive for doing so- finding her missing sister.

I enjoyed the scenery through the story and it does deal with some body horror and bugs. However, I did not find it anything terribly bad. But some readers may.

I enjoyed that the author explained how the vampires were in fact dead and not of this world. I enjoyed that she attempted to take a lot of the human characteristics out of them. I think this made for a better story and a loss of empathy for these undead creatures.

I did find the story dragged for me to the ultimate plot point but it did eventually get there. I will say I was not surprised with the ending and the twist wasn’t really a surprise to me. I think it is all very obvious in the end.

All in all this was a decent vampire YA read and could make a very good short TV series for the YA audience. I would recommend adding it to your spooky season read list.

This was just disappointing. Partially my fault because I tried going into it without reading the full synopsis, just liked the initial the vibes. But the vampire-driven story here came off kind of corny. I dragged myself through the audiobook and almost DNF’d.

It felt incredibly repetitive and just drawn out. Could’ve been 100 pages shorter and much more powerful that way. The horror elements were solid but again super repetitive. I needed more from it -- I wish there was WAYYYY more of a focus on the disgusting bugs and environment that the MC is trapped in. Instead, the repetition of how much the vampire's voice put her in a trance kept turning me off once I was finally intrigued. I predicted the ending quite early on, and wish there was more to deter us from guessing.

To be fair I didn’t read the synopsis but knew it was a horror book. But I’ve read better vampire things recently so it just fell super flat for me.

Yu's writing style is lovely, though. So I'd be willing to read another one from her.

2/5

Aja has spent her 16 years being second-best to her older sister Fiona. But when Fiona disappears and unexplained weather phenomena and strange caterpillars show up in her hometown, Aja begins to wonder what’s going on. As more teens go missing, Aja encounters a horrifying being – a vampire who knows how to feed off her insecurities and lures her to join him. She makes a bargain with him, hoping that she will find her sister and be able to kill the vampire before the week is out. But will she be able to survive a week with a vampire and find her sister?

A gothic horror set in the 1990s with vampires was enough to get me excited about this work, but unfortunately, it just didn’t do it for me. I did enjoy the use of caterpillars and butterflies – this was a unique inclusion that took this story up a notch. There were some gruesome descriptions and occurrences surrounding this that were disgustingly wonderful. However, this was basically all I enjoyed about this work.

The characters were lacking in depth and development, and they were impossible to connect with emotionally. Aja is 16 years old, but her emotions, actions, and voice make her seem as if she’s 11 or 12 (aside from all the swearing). The first half of the book includes significant chunks of her complaining about how perfect her sister is and how much she resents her and how she’ll never compare – this would be good character depth if it wasn’t the only development she had. Plus, its repetition gets old quickly. She also changed her mind often and for no explainable reason, which got frustrating. Padraic, the vampire, was just a stereotypical classic vampire with no other development or depth. The remaining characters were all lacking as well.

There was some romance between Aja and Padraic that did not add to the story at all. It felt like it was included just because it’s a typical trope for a vampire story – there was no chemistry, no realistic compulsion, nothing that made it feel like it belonged. There was a lot of telling rather than showing, especially in relation to this romance. Aja constantly told us that the vampire was attractive and alluring, but he wasn’t written in a way that made this evident.

Finally, the pacing left much to be desired. The first three-quarters of the book was heavy on inner dialogues, debates about if the vampire was redeemable, etc., which made for a drastically slow read. The last quarter of the book was action-packed, making it a little difficult to digest everything that happened. I think if the repetitive portions were cut out of this work, it would be a good 180 pages shorter.

My thanks to NetGalley and Tantor Audio for allowing me to read and review this book (also, the narrator did an amazing job!). All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

3.75 stars rounded to 4. A bit repetitive at times, but a stellar debut....also I'm now officially terrified of caterpillars.... Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an AudioARC in exchange for an honest review.

Aja has always felt second fiddle...second fiddle to her white friends, and second fiddle to her gorgeous and adored sister, Fiona. When Fiona goes missing after her 17th birthday, Aja is anxious to find her.... especially after fellow classmates continue to go missing as well. When a dark stranger comes to Aja's window one evening, she makes a deal with a devil in hopes of finding Fiona: Five nights spent in the company of the devil....and if she can retain her will to leave by the fifth night she can walk away. What will Aja find lurking in the woods? And will she be able to resist the dark stranger for all five nights?

In a world saturated with Vampires we all crave something refreshing to sink our teeth into. While the Vampires themselves appear more typical, their caterpillar and butterfly companions are terrifying and new. White butterflies whose wings fill red as they drink your blood.... caterpillars with chomping teeth and soulless black eyes continuously pursuing you. Aja herself means well, but falling in and out of the vampire's spell, while necessary to the story, felt repetitive in its delivery. I wish there was something charming about the vampires we meet so I could have fallen under the spell as hard as Aja did at times. The climax was predictable, but with fresh elements that kept me from feeling like I'd been there before.

3.75 out of 4 stars with a forever fear of caterpillars and white butterflies. Recommended for readers of vampire tales more focused on gore than romance. Age range recommended is 15+ as there is body gore.