This book was one of my most anticipated releases, the cover is absolutely stunning and the summary sounds so good. This book started off strong, I was hooked immediately, unfortunately I lost momentum around the 20% mark. It’s definitely a different read and I do think it has its audience, unfortunately as much as I wish I was, I wasn’t one of them.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

I was sucked in by this cover and the summary and I was extremely happy I got an ARC.

This was a sad and beautiful story about abuse and love. Madelyn and Riley both had abusive mothers in different ways. I felt so bad for Riley and Sam the more we learn about their mother. Uncle Toby was badass and awesome. He stepped into the role of a parent so quickly and he left college just to help his sister. That is amazing. The love he had for his sister and the love Riley had for Sam was a huge part of the plot. Riley never saw Sam as a burden and did all she could to protect her. The relationship they had was the opposite of Lillian and Camille.

Madelyn is a strong person and she was so cool in fighting her mother and her mother’s abuse. I love a story where the main character fights against their abusers. Also, there’s barely any romantic interaction between Madelyn and Riley so if you were looking for a magical sapphic story this probably won’t be it. This is mostly about taking back your freedom and learning to hardness the power inside you. And hurting those who have hurt you.

This is a quick, emotional read with evocative writing and truly memorable imagery. In a relatively short book, Cipri succeeds in giving the characters dimension and imbuing the story with a lot of heart--I think where they truly excel is in their dialogue and in their gruesome prose. A perfect read for the impending spooky season!

Nino Cipri's YA debut is:

-witchy
-creepy
-icky
-real

It's also well-paced with rounded characters, and actually feels like YA horror rather than "horror with teens."

Another young adult horror that I absolutely devoured. The themes in this book are a bit more mature so I connected even more to the story and atmosphere the author creates. I think my favorite part about this story though was the setting: creepy forest is a must read for me.

What to say about this book? I finished it in three days because it grabbed something in my soul and refused to let go until I had rethought everything I knew about sisterhood and magic and family? It made me long for more folk tale focused books in the fantasy genre? Nino Cipri crafted a beautiful balance between mundane real-life horror and supernatural horror that addressed both in such a reverent and respectful way. Their written portrayal of the bodily transformations both Madelyn and Riley experience were visceral and impossible to look away from, but clearly weren't just gore for the sake of gore, as each instance leant itself to the further development of the reader's understanding of magic in this world. I felt the approach to the inner workings of magic were such a beautiful homage to an older age of superstition and belief, with its connection to wild spaces and bindings with oddly mundane items and intentions. And every character felt so real in their reactions to the abhorrent events around them, so I never felt that anyone seemed weirdly calm about what was happening. A truly wonderful book for any teens with an inclination toward the more macabre side of fantasy.

Creepy, beautiful, witchy, and queer, Dead Girls Don't Dream was hard to put down. Eldritch forest magic, an immersive New England setting, and a cast of compelling characters—both living and dead—made this YA horror novel an engrossing and memorable read.

This is a gorgeous YA horror novel, but it's got some very intense parts. Be forewarned going in about massively abusive parents (well, mostly one parent) and parental drug addiction. As others have said, this does present a wonderfully creepy forest setting, but it also shows the more realistic, impoverished side of New England (see the drug addiction, etc.). It's a book that doesn't pull any punches, but there are still moments of lightness and joy that shine through. It's also, particularly toward the end, a ravenously angry, rage-filled text, and I loved how it dealt with fury, redemption, victimization, and gaslighting. It's a complex work, for sure, and I'm going to be thinking about it all year. (That ending?!)
(I also didn't realize this was a riff on Cipri's absolutely stunning short story "Which Super Little Dead Girl Are you? Take Our Quiz and Find Out!" in Nightmare Magazine, as I'd've been even more stoked--if such a thing were possible.)

The twisting and winding mystery is beautifully gross. One of those great kinds of thrillers that gets better after a reread, because all of the little pieces click together. Reading was like an immersive experience, not just a story.

I will admit I'm no longer much of a YA reader, and what I do read tends to be nostalgia reads. Despite this, this was an incredibly enjoyable read. The imagery was amazing, and as part of that, I loved that a lot of the symbolism was done using mundane trinkets. It added to the general atmosphere throughout the story.

<spoiler> I also found myself thinking multiple times throughout the book "Wow, this sounds like rural Vermont." Not the "Oh let's go skiing and stay in a cute little B&B" Vermont, but the "drug epidemic reaching towns that are only dirt roads" Vermont. The "Old men in Dunks all day repeating the same stories about the town" Vermont(even though in my town it was the local gas station). While I don't believe this story is specifically set in Vermont, I could feel it, and it was greatly appreciated(and pretty validating to learn in the acknowledgments that the author is from VT). </spoiler>

I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.