I really enjoyed Ava Reid's A Study In Drowning earlier this year. I was most interested in Together We Rot because it fell in the same YA horror genre. I did not get the same vibe though, but I did find this to be a quick, fast paced adventure on grief and cults. It was a touch too gory in detail for me to really LOVE this, but I did appreciate the end and how Wil is able to move on.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the arc.

This was, to me at least, a one of a kind book. The horror and romance elements mixed so well and I was deeply invested in the characters. The only reason I wouldn’t consider this a 5 star read for me is because I wanted a little bit more of everything amazing that was being given. Friends to lovers and cult elements combine to make a scary and swoony ya read.

Thank you to PenguinTeen Canada for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

What’s it about?

Wilhelmina “Wil” Greene knows that her mother didn’t run off and abandon her and her father. She has always believed something more sinister was afoot, but the local police continue to brush off her suspicions. And she has evidence she’s collected of strange animal sacrifices by the local preacher.

And on top of it all, she lost her best friend, Elwood, when she accused his preacher father of having something to do with it.

But strange things are beginning to happen with Elwood. He vomits a moth up in the sink, and the members of his father’s church are far more sinister than they appear.

Part creepy cult, part love story, part plant horror, Together We Rot has all the autumnal, spooky vibes.

My thoughts?

Ok, let’s just get it out there. This book is weird… and I loved it. I get hooked when nature turns sinister and wildlife gets supernaturally creepy. And Together We Rot embodies all of those things.

Wil is a fantastic FMC. Her obsession with her mother’s disappearance, her force of will to be able to live on after her father crumbles into depression, living in an old motel, sneaking around to collect evidence. Amazing.

And Elwood is such a victim of terrible circumstance. Gaslit and brainwashed by a church cult, waking up to the horror of who they really are and what they are willing to sacrifice is terrifying. Poor, sweet Elwood.

There is also great friend support in this one. Loved how they stepped up when least expected.

I do admit to being somewhat confused by what was happening at multiple points in this book. It’s part of the lure, of course, but connecting the dots from point A to point B was somewhat confusing, especially near the end of the story.

Overall though, this one is well written and the perfect addition to your creepy fall TBR!

This is certainly one of the more unique books I've read this year, and while I didn't love it quite as much as I would have expected to I certainly have nothing much to complain about. On it's surface the book is a fun paranormal horror romance about an angry girl and a cinnamon-roll boy who come together after a falling out to save said boy from his crazy cult family, but underneath all of that it's also a story about grief, anger, and trauma and learning who you can become when you're out from under the thumb of those things. It had some beautiful writing and a great cast of characters, the only thing that really stood out as a downfall is that everything happened so quickly once things got started. There was a rather slow start when it came to getting to the meat of the story, but then things were coming at you one after another that there wasn't really much time to breathe or process. The ending was absolutely wild too, and I don't think I ever would have seen it coming no matter how many books I had read. As it stands I wish things would have been fleshed out some more, but I will certainly have no problem recommending this to anyone who shows an interest in similar reads, and I'll certainly be on the lookout for whatever Arndt puts out next, because I have a hard time believing she's going anywhere but up in her career.

⭐️4.5

Thank you to penguin teen Canada and netgalley for providing me this e-arc for an honest review.

I don't even know where to start with this review. I went into this book with pretty high expectations, and let me tell you, it did not disappoint .

I absolutely loved that we got to read from both Wil and Elwoods point of views and I found both characters to be written really well, they were 3 dimensional.

I also think the world building was done really well, and in fact I would have loved to know more about it. The writing flowed really well and some of the descriptions were genuinely written so well that they were kinda creepy to think about.

Overall, I think this book had a lot of potential, and the author did not disappoint. Perfect Autumn read, just in time for spooky season.

ALSO, can we talk about that cover, because it is absolutely STUNNING!

I need y’all to meet Wil & Elwood IMMEDIATELY. Good thing this beauty releases TOMORROW!

Have y’all ever looked at a painting and wanted to use all the perfect words to describe it. That’s what reading this book was like. I was pulled in and immersed.

Skyla Arndt has painted a book full of all the creepy details that provide the most horrific backdrop, with eloquent imagery to pull you into the dark and whimsical world of the Morguewood.

If you’re into:
🕵🏻‍♀️Mystery & suspense
🦌Eldritch horrors
Cults getting their dues 🩸😈
Grief and Trauma followed by
Growth & Redemption
🦋A soft boy
👿A feral FMC ready to burn this town down
❤️‍🩹Forgiveness and acceptance
👹Horrormance
😱Spooky season reads
♥️ YA style love, but oh the journey.
🚲Permissive adults….seriously how are these kids this sneaky?! Where are the adults!
🪲A whole lot of creepy bugs and rotting things

Then you’ll probably get sucked into this paranormal YA just like I did. Seriously, I want to give these kids a hug.

TW for parental abuse, death of a love one, BUGS, gore, cult/religious trauma

Thanks to Skyla Arndt & Netgalley for the e-ARC to review!

As fall begins to come closer, I find myself being drawn towards stories that feel like Hozier songs. Books that feel like sinking into the forest and feeling the vines grow through rib bones.
Books that are dark and dangerous because the forest is alive and it is so much bigger than something so small as one human.

Together We Rot scratched that itch but also made me want to find more books like it.
Wil Greene's mom has been missing for almost a year and it doesn't matter what her former best friend Elwood says, she knows his parents have something to do with it.
Elwood is counting his days till he turns 18, and then he'll finally matter as a member of the Church of Adam.
But when he overhears something that he wasn't supposed to find out yet, everything gets turned upside down.
Both the Church of Adam and the forest are a lot more dangerous then they knew, and Wil and Elwood may not be able to stop the sacrifices.
The forest is hungry for blood.

4/5 Stars
CW: Mentions of physical/verbal abuse, body horror, loss of a parent, light gore, emesis, religious trama

3.5/5

Please check trigger warnings before reading, especially when you have triggers surrounding religious trauma, child abuse, animal death/sacrifice and/or have a fear of bugs. The trigger warnings listed on the site of the author are not a complete list.

This was one of my most anticipated reads and it did not entirely live up to the expectations I had. I had a difficult time really getting into the book, neither of the characters really stood out as loveable. Elwood a bit more than Wil. Wil mostly came across as irrationally angry and spiteful towards her former best friend who chose his family over her. But as she "jokes" somewhere in the beginning she is very well aware that he is being abused by his parents so it shouldn't really have come as a surprise that he would remain loyal to his family.

While I wasn't a fan of the start, near the end things started to pick up, unravel and come together and that's when I started enjoying the book. I know lot of people were unhappy about the ending, but I actually really liked.

All in all I think this book has a lot of potential, but there are definitely some improvements to be made. And I would definitely love to see a more extensive list of trigger warnings for this book.

📚 Together We Rot
✍️ Skyla Arndt
📖 YA Romance Fantasy
⭐⭐⭐.5/5

Will’s mom has been missing for over a year. The police have stopped looking into the investigation and Will is furious. She accused her best friend, Elwood, of knowing something about what happened. Will is convinced that Elwood’s parents had something to do with the disappearance.

Elwood’s parents are super religious and are planning on sending him away on his 18th birthday to learn how to be a bigger, more important part of the church. But one day Elwood overhears his father talking about how Elwood must die in order for the church to live, Elwood makes a run for it.

He runs into Will, and together they put aside their differences to discover what is truly going on with Elwood and what happened to Will’s mom.

This book was pretty wild. The ending felt slightly rushed, all of the sudden Elwood was having all of these changes and the quickness of it made it harder to picture in my mind. But it was a very cool premise and story.

Read if you love
-Creepy Cults
-Small Town
-Teen Angst
-Face Paced
-He Falls First

Cults. True Crime. MOTHS. Together We Rot was the dark mystery infused with magic novel of my dreams. Wil’s mother is missing—and she knows that Elwood’s family has something to do with it. I could not get enough of this scary little town in the Upper Peninsula.

Each of the POVs were so authentic and well developed, the characters felt very real to me. Wil in particular was captivating; her anger was very raw and palpable. Her fury was righteous, but she was made so much more real in that she was mean and lashed out at others, even if they didn’t deserve her ire. Elwood, despite his naivety, is a compelling character as well with his good heart and the care he has for his friends. The body horror he experiences is gut-wrenching and yet fascinating. The forest continues to call to me and I will read anything Skyla Arndt writes.

I received a free digital copy from Edelweiss and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars

I wanted to love this story since the book cover is beautiful and the description is alluring, but I felt a few things fell short.

Firstly, what I enjoyed the most was the eldritch aesthetic. The author did a spectacular job of creating a chilling and uncanny atmosphere with spellbinding writing. The plot was unique and captivating, and I loved the concept of a monster lying beneath the surface of the soft boy. The questioning of one’s identity is a topic that I like delving into, and this theme of self-discovery was a crucial aspect of Elwood’s story. It was a bittersweet ending seeing him become his own person.

While the story was primarily horror mixed with some mystery elements and delivered expertly by the author, there was also a romance subplot that felt a bit forced and unnecessary. I would’ve enjoyed the book just as much or even more if the protagonists were just friends. The pacing felt a bit off, making it difficult for me to stay engaged from beginning to end. Also, I think the story barely scratched the surface of something more. There was a lot of potential for further exploration into the religious cult and their history.

Content warnings: mentions of physical/verbal abuse, body horror, loss of a parent, light gore, emesis

Thank you, NetGalley and Penguin Teen, for sending me an e-ARC of this book! All opinions are my own.

This one had a lot of potential. I think it needed to be about 100 pages longer to give the story more room to expand in detail and extend the pacing. It felt a bit too hurried at parts where a little more detail would have brought the reader deeper into the story.

I blew through this in a day because it’s a really easy read but it’s also just another YA paranormal horror book (lacks in horror, I don’t know if I would really classify it as that) with a lot of the same tropes done overdone. I didn’t find it unique and it was definitely missing something. The romance was also incredibly rushed - I’m over YA personally so I’m not sure why I still bother but overall I found it okay.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book!

A very unique story line turned into an excellent book with solid characters and a creepy community setting. Starla Arndt skillfully built this story from differing points of view into an overall race against the clock and calendar to save a young man's life and find a young woman's missing mother before the "religious" cult that guides the community's actions can find them. The story has a haunting feeling that seems to come directly from the page, leaving you wanting much, much more of the story when you turn the last page. It was a fast read, shorter than most, but long enough to leave this reader wondering when Arndt's next book will be out.

Wow 🥲 Together We Rot was haunting and heartbreaking and so beautiful.

It focuses on Wil, whose mother has been missing for a year, and Elwood, her former best friend whose family runs the local church.

I had no idea the synopsis of this book when I went into it, so the whole plot was a surprise and I ended up loving it.

The religious cult elements of this book really added a scare factor. Then the fantasy/slightly paranormal aspects were an added touch.

This book deals with a lot of heavy topics such as alcoholism, substance abuse, religious trauma, physical abuse, death of a parent, and probably a few other things I am likely forgetting.

It broke my heart at the beginning when we learned how Elwood was treated by his father. Then the holding broke my heart in a whole different way.

I did feel like this some of this book was a bit rushed and maybe certain parts didn’t connect fully, but I really did love it.

Great read, very enjoyable! The *horror* aspects are palpable and the main characters are great and easy to cheer for!

Together We Rot is an enjoyable horror/romance debut with elements of mystery and contemporary realities (it touches on themes of alcoholism, abuse, neglect, religious cultism, grief, and more). Of all its elements, this book shines the most when focusing on the main duo, Wil (a prickly, grieving girl dedicated to finding truth and justice for the disappearance of her mother) and El (a softer, shyer boy suffering under the control of a fanatically religious, borderline cult-leader father/family that just wants to use him for their own purposes). Both characters bring a lot of personal baggage to the table and opt to cope in different ways, and I was rooting for them the whole time as they went from holding each other at arms' length, afraid to be hurt again, to letting each other back in and falling back in love.

Another strength of this book was the descriptions of the small town and forest where the story is set. Arndt really excels at the horror element of her worldbuilding, and her descriptions of a certain character's slow evolution throughout the novel were a perfect level of unsettling and unnerving.

Personally, I felt like the plot was where the book faltered. The pacing rushed in places, particularly toward the end, and certain plot points were too predictable to the point where reading it felt almost boring, like I was rushing ahead to get to the next interesting part. The ending in particular was a bit of a let down, as I was left thinking 'that's it?' after turning the last page.

All in all, this is a four star read and a solid debut from an author who seems to have found her specific niche from the start. I'm excited to follow her career and see what Skyla Arndt does next!

I struggled with how to rate this book. I couldn’t decide if it was best to round up to 4 stars, or down to 3. I wanted to love this book, I really did. The plot sounded interesting, I was ready for a supernatural love story but it just kinda fell a bit short for me.

I want to start by saying that my main issue with this book was its length. As a result, I also have an issue with the pacing of the story. I felt like everything was happening without much cause and I wasn’t invested with any of the characters. The book is 272 pages and for most of it, I was left with confusion. This book felt like a short story that was expanded to get create a novel but it wasn’t done as well as it could’ve been.

I wish this book had gripped me from the start but I won’t lie, it was a slow start. Even when things started to pick up, I still wasn’t on the edge of my seat reading to see what happened next. When I realized that this book basically all happens within the span of 2 days, I was wishing it started a bit earlier. I feel like if I had more time to get to know these characters, I would’ve been much more interested in what was happening.

I couldn’t find it in myself to like our main character, Wil. I just couldn’t understand what Elwood saw in her and because the book is so short, we never really get to. You’re given short glimpses into their past and the author tries to create something for their relationship to stand on but it just didn’t work for me.

Now, I did enjoy some things about this book. I really liked that it was dual POV because it gave me a chance to see things from Elwood’s perspective. This aspect made the climax of the book much more interesting than if it was just told through one POV. I also really liked that Wil had a female friend who was there for her while dealing with her own stuff. It’s nice to see main characters who maintain their friendships throughout their story.

together we rot is the perfect book to read for spooky season!! i CANNOT watch horror movies but i think reading horror is fine so this book has convinced me to definitely explore more in the genre!

this book is very fast-paced and easy to read, i could picture everything happening in my head and the vibes were all there. everything about the book is weird but in a good way, i could not understand a large chunk of it but it was still captivating. the characters are great, wil and elwood both are very 3d and their romance is so cute. the sunshine and sunshine protector trope is forever the cutest!

i feel like the entire story could be even better if it was just a little longer because there was a lot happening but the last bit was very abrupt. the ending also could have had an epilogue imo just because i need more of will & elwood *crying emoji*

overall, this was an enjoyable book although not lifechanging and i am so recommending this book to every single person this autumn!! also huge thanks for the author for letting me be on the street team, i had a wonderful time promoting the book!

This is a dark story with likable characters and a sweet romance. I would love if this become a series. I would recommend this to those who enjoy dark stories and romances. Special Thank You to Skyla Arndt, Penguin Group/Penguin Young Readers Group, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a complimentary copy prior to publication in exchange for an honest review.