A great fall book! The story takes us to the East Coast to a small island where Thalia has grown up, and goes back to solve the mysteries surrounding a letter she receives telling her she has had a sister that was given up for adoption. The story was spooky, fun, and a little kitschy as well. I enjoyed the moodiness and ambiance that definitely helped me get into the fall season, and would suggest it to anyone who enjoys a good mystery! The characters were really fun, the story twists were not predictable and the story itself touched on some real issues in our world - including addiction, which was portrayed in a very thoughtful way. I would recommend this book to someone wanting to get into a spooky mood!!

This ebook was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I appreciated the intention behind this book but the overall outcome was just not my jam. I didn’t understand a lot of the decisions the characters made and it ended up coming off pretty cartoony.

3.5*

It's the perfect time of year to start reading creepy stories and this one gave me all the "feels." 🎃

This I believe is Christa Carmen's first full length novel and it's a good one! The story is gothic creepy and all throughout there are mentions of the great gothic novels of past. There's an old manor house (now a B &B) on Block Island that is owned by the Searles sisters. The creepiness of the house and strange happenings in there definitely added to the story.

The story is told in two parts by two sisters. The first part is through Blake. She comes to Block Island to try to find her Mother who gave her away at birth. While she tries to find the courage to confront her mother she takes a room at White Hall (the Searles' sisters B&B.) Some strange occurrences begin to happen....Blake writes a letter to her sister on the eve of her death (not a spoiler as this is told in the opening chapter.) In Part Two Thalia must return back to Block Island where she was raised because of that eerie letter she received from a sister she did not even know she had.

This is a good story. It has a great setting of Block Island in the "off season." There are no tourists and just a sparse population of only the locals. It's chilly and rainy season and White Hall is a gothic-style old manor with creepy boards, and hideaway places. Plus there just might be a ghost lingering about! It's not a horror but a spooky mystery. There's a lot going on but I still enjoyed this one!

A creepy B&B?
Count me in! I have never stayed at a bed and breakfast, and I really don't think I will.

This book is packed full of whodunits. Who did this murder? Who did that murder? Who is who? Who REALLY did it? I thought I knew, but I guessed wrong, don't hire me to solve any crimes.

The characters were amazing. I loved Sarah. You really rooted for them, or you didn't like them very much. I would say all in all Block Island is the place to be, but really it doesn't seem fun!

Loved it. The characters were real and creative, the plot was intricate and interesting, the setting was alive. Carefully crafted, and wonderfully written.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishers for this Advanced Readers Copy of The Daughters of Block Island by Christa Carmen!

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
The premise of the book drew me in but once I started reading it, I just couldn’t get into it at all.
I wish the author, publisher and all those promoting the book much success and connections with the right readers.

Christa Carmen's Daughters of Block Island is a pure triumph. Spooky, with unreliable narrators and fascinating ghosts. Great prose and characters, with enough darkness and emotion to be remarkably memorable.

What a great spooky, gothic novel to kick off fall reads. I loved the atmospheric setting of White Hall and Block Island. The ghost stories were creepy and the mystery kept me guessing! Will post my review on Instagram closer to pub date

Christa Carmen's The Daughters of Block Island toys with the conventions of gothic fiction often giving meta commentary to the scenes as they unfold. However, in many places, the concept exceeds the execution. There are references to classic gothic fiction - mysteries of udolpho, The Monk, Northanger Abbey, and Rebecca feature prominently - but their relation to the plot is left surface level. The description calls Daughters an "ingenious and subversive twist on the classic gothic novel," but it falls short, largely because it does not complicate its relationship with the source material or update the social commentary. It's unclear precisely what is meant to be subverted.

As a thriller, Carmen crafts a solid narrative that steadily builds through a dramatic ending.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This book is a great example of what Gothic Literature is and should be - for the most part. The plot and characters are well-crafted and the atmosphere was terrific. The pacing was a bit off, and the POV switch was jarring, though.

3.5/5

There is a mystery at the center of this creative-yet-clichèd novel that kept pulling me back in. I liked the author’s ability to bend genres and cleverly borrow from already established tropes to write something wholly unique but even at just over 300 pages it felt long. Still a high recommendation form yours truly.

I love a good gothic mystery and this one took the prize. Plenty of twists to keep me flipping the pages well into the night and an ending that had my jaw on the floor. Really, go grab yourself one on release day!

Thank you NetGalley for the eArc copy of this book for an honest review.

The daughters of block island was an interesting read. I enjoyed the plot, and story telling. The writing was very much YA and my younger self would definitely have enjoyed this book more. My current self was hoping for something a little more, but that's a personal preference. Overall great read.

Thank you Netgalley, author, and the publishers for allowing me the opportunity to read this e-arc.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. While the premise was interesting I didn’t connect with the characters or the story in a meaningful manner. Some books just aren’t for us, and that’s okay!

After arriving on Block Island to find her birth mother, Blake Bronson becomes convinced she’s the heroine of a gothic novel―the kind that allowed her intermittent escape from a traumatic childhood. How else to explain the torrential rain, the salt-worn mansion known as White Hall, and the restless ghost purported to haunt its halls?

The ending was definitely hold-your-breath drama, and I loved how the author tied up all the loose ends very neatly. I highly recommend the book to fans of gothic novels and anyone looking for an exhilarating emotional ride filled with suspense.



Thank you to Netgalley for letting me read this in exchange for the review

I’d like to start this review by thanking Netgalley and Thomas and Mercer for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

From the very beginning of the book I was captivated by the gothic horror feeling of the book. There is something so novel about a story with an old house, ghosts, a murder mystery, and a rainy secluded backdrop. Christa Carmen weaves a twisting wicked story with grace and wonder.

I thought that beginning the book from Blake’s POV and slowly learning more and more about her affliction and why she was in recovery helped add an element of urgency and maddness to her narrative. It makes her story feel as though she’s hanging on by a thread and if only she could solve this mystery, she might be able to find solid ground. Her character creates this haunted affect that impacts everything she touches. It’s almost as if even when she’s gone, her ghost pushes the story forward.

Thalia is almost the mirror opposite of her sister. Where Blake was impulsive and rash, Thalia was level headed, and rational. She managed to solve the mystery and avenge her sister. Thalia has the benefit of knowing where she came from, knowing Block Island and knowing the characters in play where Blake came in blind and scrambling. I could argue that this is the reoccurring theme in both of their lives, whether Thalia knew this before coming back to Block Island or not.

The whole ensemble of characters worked so well together to create a story of intrigue and mystery like something I might find in a Nancy Drew game. Overall I very much enjoyed this book and found myself saying “what rhe f*ck” on several occasions.

As someone who has spent summers on Block Island since before I could walk, and who has found endless inspiration in the windswept rocky beaches and towering clay cliffs, I was thrilled to discover a novel in one of my favorite genres taking place on my favorite island! Those who have only summered on the Block will be hard pressed to envision it as the empty gothic wasteland Carmen invokes, but the howling wind and driving rain outside my window as I write this in my house on the south of the island beg to differ. It was endlessly fun to see some of my most well-known and well loved locations crop up (the Island Free Library and the Block Island Times are very real places) yet I didn’t quite feel that the prose and descriptions of the island overall built adequate atmosphere. The descriptions often come across as a rough sketch rather than an immersive experience, arguably a component more key to gothic fiction than blighted manors or ominous bachelors.

Still, I appreciated this novel as a modern homage to classics such as Jane Eyre and The Haunting of Hill House. The story is chock full of tongue and cheek references to titans of the genre, to a point that is fun but occasionally strays into the overdone, especially given the heaviness of some of the other subject matter (TW for sexual assault, addiction, overdose, and extreme physical violence). The story is an interesting mix of originality and clichés — I loved seeing a queer protagonist in the genre, for example, and appreciated the acknowledgement of the island’s homogeneity and history of racism. However, the villain of the novel is disappointingly transparent from the get-go and lacks complex motivations: the character incentives in general seem underbaked. I also think the story could have done without two character perspectives: without giving spoilers, the POV shift a quarter of the way in feels unnecessary and the story could have easily survived with just the later 3/4s intact.

Thank you to Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for providing a review copy.
This is a twisty, rain-soaked, atmospheric take of two sets of sisters and how their lives intertwine. This book takes the classic gothic tropes and fashions them into a murder mystery entangled in family secrets. I really enjoyed this book, although I felt it was a little long. I loved Christa Carmen's short story collection and I think she is absolutely one to watch in the horror genre. 4.5 stars, rounded up.