I absolutely loved this book. It was really well written and it was also surprising. Thank you for the arc. I really appreciate it.

First 5 star read for 2024!! And dare I say that Adrienne Young is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors?

The Unmaking of June Farrow had me at the edge of my seat. While I wasn't quiet sure how the time travel was working, I believe that was intentional. You are following along while June herself discovers what she and the women in her family are capable of. I felt like I was right there beside her and loved every minute of it!

Filled with magical realism, farm life in the early 50's, and romance, I could not put this down. If you loved Spells for Forgetting, or even if this is your first book by Adrienne Young, I highly recommend The Unmaking of June Farrow.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for an ARC in exchange for honest review.

3.5⭐️
I have mixed feelings for this book. I think the author is a beautiful author and there are other books of hers that I loved. This one missed the mark, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. Perhaps my biggest complaint is that when an author ads magical realism into a plot, I think that I can go one of two ways. Add a whole other layer of complexity and beauty, or it almost as a scapegoat for any plot points they don’t quite have a clean solution. I think this one fell into the second option. Many have loved or will love it. It just wasn’t for me!

"The Unmaking of June Farrow" is a book that stayed with me long after I finished it. While I still don't fully understand the logic of the time travel, the characters hooked me from the start. It's a beautifully written book with nuanced, compelling, multi-dimensional characters I loved getting to know. Living inside June's head was a treat.

Titular June Farrow comes from a long line of women who are known to go "crazy" at the end of their lives. Slipping in and out of reality. But do they really? The unfolding of this mystery was my favorite part of the novel. What decisions will June make? What decisions would I have made in her situation? What is "right?" What hurts the least? What do you do when you can choose your life and who you love?

I love a strong female character and this novel was full of them. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a beautifully written book & it broke me in all the right ways! This author has been on my radar for a while now & I wholeheartedly regret waiting so long to jump on the bandwagon. This book is easily one of my new found favorites that I will be thinking about for a long time. I honestly can’t wait to read another book by Young, but the Farrow’s will always hold a special place in my heart.

Young has figured out how to give you just enough detail to where you feel like you’re there without it being too drawn out. It was so well written that it really felt like I was living June’s life & watching it all play out before me. It was a unique take on time travel which I’ve always been fascinated with but the love story & all the details that wove together to make the whole story is what really pulled me in and pulled my heartstrings & had me bawling like a baby on more than one occasion. I stayed up way too late to finish this book and I have NO regrets. Do yourself a favor… run, don’t walk to where you purchase books and pick this one up.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Delacorte Press & Adrienne Young for an eARC of this amazing book in exchange for an honest review.

Ultimately, I did like this book. I feel like it had a really interesting storyline and a cast of lovable, if complicated, characters. Where I got a little lost was the time travel aspect. Time travel has always been something that I can’t quite wrap my mind around and this one has what felt to me like an added layer by having the main character basically double time traveling. However, I recognize that this is more a personal preference (read: struggle) of mine so I don’t want that to take away from my overall feeling of this book. I definitely became invested in the characters and their lives. I find that if I don’t think to hard about the time travel, it was definitely an enjoyable read!

I have read several books by this author now, and I must say I have enjoyed them all. The Unmaking of June Farrow is the first of the author’s adult novels I have read.

This story was very different from what I was expecting, but in a good way. The threads of the story took unexpected turns, and I really liked how the author weaved them together.

I will definitely continue to read books by this author.

📖 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘜𝘯𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘑𝘶𝘯𝘦 𝘍𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘸 𝘣𝘺 𝘈𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘯𝘦 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘨

“𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘐 𝘴𝘢𝘸 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵. 𝘐𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘥-𝘰𝘶𝘵, 𝘧𝘭𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘪𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴. 𝘈 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩.“

June Farrow knows one thing with absolutely certainty; every woman in her family is cursed to lose their minds. Her mother abandoned her in an alley when she was 7 months old and then disappeared. She’s been raised by her Gran on their family’s flower farm. When her Gran dies, June realizes that the ‘sickness’ has started and makes it her mission to figure out what happened to her mother before she loses her mind. Her delusions are coming more frequently, and she can’t help but feel drawn to the Red Door that keeps appearing. What will happen if she opens it?

I was excited to finally read this book because I've heard nothing but great things about it.

This book was a mind bender but so freaking good! I felt all of June’s emotions, and cried both happy and sad tears at the end. June is such a strong FMC and you want to root for her to break the curse. The MMC was charming and definitely left me swooning.

The ending of this book is something that I will think about for a long time. I highly recommend this book to all lovers of time travel romances!

Tropes:
⏰ Time Travel
✨ Magical Realism
💞 Romance
🗺️ Fantasy

Thank you to NetGalley for my free digital copy of this book so that I could share my honest review!

Yall Yall Yall., 4.75 stars! This is so brilliant like I love this fantasy sci-fi alot! This genre is something I am not familiar with but not only is this plot unique but so twisty and unpredictable that left my jaw on the floor. Best to go into this book blind and definitely a top must read!

Thank you Netgalley and Random House!

Thank you, NetGalley for the advanced copy of The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young. This was overall one of my top 2023 rates. I loved the magical realism in the story.

It takes an accomplished writer to make such a complex story flow so seamlessly and feel so possible at the same time.I don’t know what I was expecting, but this was the most perfect combination of fantasy, mystery, and sci-fi.A beautiful story about heartache, loss, and second chances..

June is the last Farrow and has decided that it will end with her. Her family is know for this curse of mental illness and she doesn't want to pass it on or her to get it.
Then the hallucinations start she tries to keep it secret but they keep coming and then she sees a door. She doesn't know why the pull to go through it is so strong until she's told to go though it. Then she finds out the Truth behind the family curse. and is it a curse at all.

It has a slow start but once you go through the door everything starts coming together and I couldn't put it down I really enjoyed this book

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book had me sobbing. I've read and loved other books by Adrienne Young, namely Fable and Namesake, but the tone here was so unexpectedly adult and emotional, and I was floored.

June Farrow has lived a pretty lonely life at her grandmother's quaint farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Farrows are an odd bunch, quirky, unchurched, and with few good friends outside the family. Oh, and they all eventually lose their grip on reality. When June's gran passes away, June is forced to confront the secret she's been keeping from her few close friends: the signs of mental illness that she has looked for her whole life are already affecting her.

With her sense of what's real already fragile, June receives a mysterious letter from her dead grandmother. It contains an impossible photo of her mother, who abandoned baby June in 1989, taken in 1912.

June's investigation into her family's secrets unfolds into an incredible love story that shows how far people will go for their friends, their children, their spouses, their family.

As a woman in my early thirties, I can't understate how much I appreciated that June was a little older than me, mature and settled, but still with room to grow. In a fantasy book market that is swamped with superpowered 17-20 year old protagonists, June felt so much more real to me. She was easy to relate to.

With high emotional stakes and some fantasy elements, this book felt like the Midsummer counterpoint to my annual Halloween re-watch of Practical Magic. It felt like those perfect hazy summertime moments, golden and floral and suspended in time.

I absolutely adored this book and it will definitely be a new favorite! Magical, mysterious, atmospheric, romantic, wholesome. This book was everything I could have asked for and the strong family theme was perfect. I fell in love with June and Eamon and Annie and Gran and Esther and the whole Farrow family. My family has lived in North Carolina for generations as hog, tobacco, wheat, and soybean farmers, so I really loved how central farming and the land was and how all of the old farming practices were brought to life in the story. When the tobacco crop for the season was going downhill and they were talking about how that’s just part of farming, it sounded like my dad talking. I also went to college at Appalachian State in the NC Blue Ridge Mountains, so the mountain setting was so perfect imo and unbeatably atmospheric. I legitimately loved everything about this book and will definitely be reading more from Adrienne Young in the future!!!

This book had an interesting premise but failed to execute it and just ended up being boring.

This book was marketed and categorized as magical realism, mystery, and romance. However, it is actually a romance book with some half-baked magical realism and a rushed mystery. The mystery basically revolves around the fact that the MMC won’t tell her something and the mystery is solved when he tells her. It was a frustrating reading experience because you know that the whole thing could have been solved by 5 minutes of conversation.

Something that frustrated me was how the Farrow curse is literally never explained. In fact, none of the characters even speculate about how this curse came to be. This is especially frustrating because one of June’s main goals is to figure out a way to break the curse. Wouldn’t this naturally lead you to wonder about how the curse came to be in the first place? Except the story absolutely refuses to head in that direction. This self-imposed mental block totally hamstrings the plot because it limits what actions June can take to break the curse. In fact, the story ends with June taking no active role in the breaking of the curse as the actual solution was already fully solved and implemented by Future June before POV June even understands what the curse is.

I did not enjoy how little agency June had throughout the entire book. She is essentially beholden to (and not to mention being manipulated by) a future version of her herself. June falls in love (or arguably back in love) with the MMC entirely by viewing memories of Future June. It is explicitly stated that she is a passive observer in these memories and that she can not change the way that she behaves as the events occur. The entire plot just happens to June, she is just an observer as events unfold around her.

"The Unmaking of June Farrow" is an absolute gem of a novel that captivated me from start to finish. The author's storytelling prowess beautifully unravels a tale of resilience, self-discovery, and the transformative power of love. The characters are vividly drawn, and the narrative's depth left me emotionally moved. A truly enchanting read that lingers in the heart long after the last page is turned.

Thanks to Adrienne Young, Random House Publishing Group, and Netgalley for allowing me to read this ARC.

sO FAR SO GOOD, ONCE i FINISH THIS BOOK i WILL COME BACK WITH DETAIL REVIEW
thank you netgalley and the publisher for sending me this book for review.
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I greatly enjoyed this book! It defies genres - it is a mystery, fantasy, romance - but beautifully blends everything into a well-paced, fascinating story. June’s character is strong, and you find yourself rooting for her to unravel the mystery and find herself in the process. The plot is complex, but not so much that it isn’t easy to follow. And the end is satisfying. 5 stars!

THIS BOOK! though it was outside of my usual genre, I am thinking that I might need to pick up more magical realism books in the future because this was incredible and just such an intricate story.

the part I loved most about this novel was the fantastic storytelling. I mean, c'mon, how do authors eve come up with storylines like this?? the level of detail and intricacies within the story were so intriguing and genuinely kept me on my toes throughout as I tried to wrap my hand around the complexities of what was happening.

the time travel aspect was so cool and I really enjoyed the past timeline which we are transported too though I wish we maybe could have seen a bit more of the present-day flashbacks at the beginning or throughout (but also I understand why not given the plot). the mystery of trying to figure everything out was so good too and there were several twists and turns that had me SHOOK as we got further into the story. I got so invested in the storyline that the last few chapters and revelations left me crying because I was so emotionally attached which is always a major feat.

ultimately, this book was so amazing and reminded a lot of weyward by emilia hart which was a 2023 fav of mine! it is the perfect combination of fantastical yet also realistic elements as well as romance and mystery. for fans of magical realism, this is a must read and has inspired me to pick up more books from this genre now :)

final rating: 4.5 stars

This book was unbelievable. Adrienne Young wove an enchanting story that bleeds small town drama. I highly recommend this.