I love the cover art for this book so much!
This thriller/horror was so good. I especially like Max's character but overall character development was so well done. I am excited to read more from this author. I really enjoyed their writing style. I will be buying a few copies of this book when it releases in September. And I'll definitely be recommending it to my friends. Thank you for letting me read an ARC copy.

This book is cinematically horrifying. Deeply unsettling in both quiet and loud ways. It's perfect. Logan-Ashley Kisner explores the terror of what may lurk in the woods with the very real, evil violence that trans youth face every day. I knew I'd love this book from the premise, and I wasn't disappointed.

I wanted to love this book, but it missed the mark, slightly. I enjoyed it but felt like it was a really great novella that found itself lost in the page count of a novel. The central plot point, the two being taken hostage and offered as sacrifice, doesn’t even show a glimmer of starting to happen until we are more than 40% done with the book. Everything before that is spending time with our characters as they escape their respective homes and hit the road. This time is used to develop the characters and fill in their backstory, it isn’t wasted, it just spoon feeds the audience way more than we need and goes on too long. And some of the scenes in the car get to be a bit much… We get a list of novels in one of our character’s bags, then a list of the albums available in the car, then we go back and forth between song lyrics and reading from a novel aloud? It felt really forced, and I felt like it was telling me a lot more about the author than about the characters. So, I didn’t love that. I feel like the story would have been much more visceral if we had only one or two of these setup chapters and then got right into the central conflict, letting more of the characters’ backstories leak out as they fought for their lives instead of having it all front-loaded.

Once the characters meet the central conflict the pacing was good. It felt a little disheveled and disconnected, but that was mirroring the characters’ experience and it worked. Both of the protagonist’s were very lovingly and honestly created, and they did both feel genuine and real. Sometimes they felt a little too easy or convenient, showing two different sides of the teenage trans experience in a way that felt like a clear set-up. Still, I felt like I knew them both, and the chasm between their personal experiences did factor into the story, though it felt like it came up and was resolved more quickly than I would have liked. If anything, they just felt young to me. Both are 18, and this story is right after they have graduated high school, but for a good portion of the story they both read younger, as maybe 16, or so, and it is a little hard to really accept their logic and decision-making when they are actual legal adults. There just felt like a discrepancy, and while characters in horror stories always get a little leeway with their decision-making, and while both characters had their own personal traumas and internal conflicts mediating their decision-making, I still felt like they were ignoring their hard-earned, lived experiences and acting in ways that felt more like sixteen-year-old kids who stole their parents’ car.

The writing itself was mostly fun, save for some cringey moments quoting songs and poems. It kept my attention and propelled the characters forward in ways that I wasn’t ever bored. I liked the central conflict and the symbolism it offered, how the dangers in the woods and the dangers of the humans around you are different types of threats that can prove equally deadly. The central protagonists weren’t particularly interesting, they felt expected and a little boring, but they served their purpose in the story. The way the central conflicts were resolved felt a little too easy, and also not very surprising. That isn’t to say the ending was unearned, or not fulfilling from a reader standpoint, I just hoped for a little more. Considering the symbolic elements of the central creature in the woods, the fear of “normal” society, and finding the inner strength to save yourself against society, there was so much more viscera to be scooped out and gobbled up in the never-ending night of those Kentucky woods.

When all is said and done, considering the topic, this story felt very gentle. There is nothing wrong with that. I have read a decent amount of other queer- and trans-horror, including stuff classified as YA, and many of those felt more graphic and threatening, for the characters and the readers. This felt more didactic than experiential. I didn’t feel like I was put in the place of these characters, I felt like I was given a lecture about what these characters experienced. And that is fine, the characters were compelling and won me over. The bloody action in the woods was well-done, whether fighting humans or beast, and the ideas around what they experienced and why were all fun to think about and play with.

I want to thank the author, the publisher Delacorte Press, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I'm honestly not sure what to make of this book. The primary thing I want to say is to read the trigger warnings in the author's notes. I also need to emphasize that there is something that I at least believe to be classified as sexual assault that is not within the trigger warnings, which the reader should be aware of.

Beyond the trigger warnings I don't fully understand this book. While it is a horror one, it made me feel less scared and more sad really, though I am outside the age range recommended for it.

I read this book over the course of 9 days, which is a bit long for me, so that could be why it feels this way, but the pacing felt rushed, especially towards the end as things wrapped up.

The good things though, are that these characters felt real. They react in ways I think a person would actually react if faced with what they're facing, and their actions have lasting consequences, instead of just ending with the book ending. It's not every day you get a story like that, though it does seem to be becoming more common now.

Overall, I'm glad I read this once, and maybe I'd need to read it again to fully understand what happened in it, or maybe it's meant to leave you confused (which also is not my favorite kind of story). It's an interesting edition to trans horror at the very least.

Amazing debut! 3.75/4 stars⭐️!

What I loved!
-The cover is so creepy!
-the dedication & author's note had me teary eyed--really powerful.
-that monster honestly sent shivers down by spine, the descriptions were really vivid.
-I liked how there was the beast but also the bigger threat seemed to be the men who were feeding the beast. It was so tense when Erin and Max would split up!!
-woods/creepy small town setting eeeeek!!

Comments!
-The first 30% was A LOT of telling instead of showing, which definitely provided a foundation for the characters but felt very slow in the beginning because of it. (book picked up so much afterwards and was a wild ride to the end!)
-Same with the dialogue during the beginning, felt a little off (this completely improved after the first quarter though!!)

Overall I really enjoyed this!! Amazing premise for horror and solid debut. Really looking forward to seeing what's next for the author. More trans horror please!! (also i saw this was originally a screenplay?! now i want a movie too!) 🏳️‍⚧️👻🤍

Thank you to the publisher & Netgalley for the ARC.

Perfect for fans of Andrew Joseph White, OLD WOUNDS by Logan-Ashley Kisner tells the story of two trans teens on their way to California to live out & proud, falling into an old mystery with a cult and a cryptid that might want to kill them.

This book ruled. I could tell from the very beginning that it was going to be good because the author actually took the time to develop the characters, who were allowed to be flawed and have a lot of depth. I feel like I'll be thinking about Erin and Max for a long time. I also enjoyed how much this felt like a horror movie, and all of the little moments where "the unique experience of being trans in a horror scenario" was allowed to shine. Super interested to see what this author writes in the future!

Wow. Wow wow wow. This was amazing! Old Wounds by Logan-Ashley Kisner is one hell of a book and I enjoyed every bit of it. This has the perfect Midwestern/southern atmosphere and stunning writing and prose. These characters are to die for as well, Max and Erin are definitely two more favorite trans characters of which I will look up to. As a transmasc 18yo myself, I saw a lot of myself in the way these character held themselves, talked, and experienced things around them. I'm glad there are books like this coming out nowadays for the trans youth to come. This book also gave me big Andrew Joseph White vibes (author of Hell Followed With Us, Compound Fracture, and The Spirit Bares Its Teeth) and as a huge AJW fan this was a bonus. I will absolutely be picking up whatever this author writes in the future!

This book had me in its grip. It reminded me of books like Camp Damascus and Ring Shout, where supernatural horror is mixed with the real-world terror of violent bigots. And honestly, the scary supernatural scenes have nothing on the deeply, deeply unsettling scenes with the human baddies. I had to set the book down a couple times cause I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what would happen next. We also get flashbacks where we see why Max and Erin were willing to take the risks to escape their home town, and it makes you ache for the characters. I thought this was great, definitely recommend.

This is an amazing trans teen-centered horror novel that's at once an intense supernatural small-town horror story (think evil cis men and ancient pacts) and a quieter but no less intense meditation on love, betrayal, and familial and social violence and abuse. The cover, to me, is a bit more 'fun' than the book ends up being, but it's a true tour-de-force narratively AND thematically, and I loved the emotional heft of it as well as the stranger, more abstract elements of the horror. The character work was impeccable too. I hope this is wildly successful for Halloween season, as it should be!

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

Be prepared for my long review.

Old Wounds opens up and shows you its guts right away. What if the person you loved most in the world shunned you for years and then randomly asked you to run away with them? What makes a real trans experience? What does it mean to “fight” for it? What makes a “female sacrifice”? in a trans dynamic? Are monsters transphobic? Would Mothman care about what you were assigned at birth?

My heart was racing for Max and Erin. I didn’t know where the book would go but it showed so many different sides of what it means to be a man and a woman. I was able to be in the shoes of these characters and it was beautiful, raw, and unflinching.

Max is jealous. Erin is concerned. They are going on this big trip together to be able to be queer in California instead of their bigoted small hometown. Max is unable to be himself anywhere else. They both love and hate each other for reasons the other doesn’t know. They put on a mask of indifference for their end goal until there’s a literal hole in their plans the size of nails in their tire.

The horror elements here go a few different ways. The real life horror of being a trans youth in America today. Seeing people like you on the news that are dead named/misgendered and treated like just another tragic story. The tales of people like Brandon Teena who are assaulted and murdered for “lying” and told that they deserved it. We have that mixed in with actually small town hicks trying to sacrifice girls to a monster in the woods.

I don’t want to spoil this book because it’s so good, but I will say it’s an eye opening read with plenty of blood and horror and real like issues mixed in. I loved it so much and I’ll be hyping it up so much as it comes out in September.

I love horror, but a horror story needs to be either really good or really bad for me to recommend it to others. Old Wounds isn’t good. It’s incredible!

This is going to be a long one, so bear with me. Hopefully, by the end, you’ll understand why I love Logan-Ashley Kisner’s debut so much.

Old Wounds is about two trans-teens on the run, hoping to reach California with the hope of securing a certain future where they can be who they are. No, it’s about being trapped in a car with your ex. Actually, it’s about a monster who demands “female sacrifice,” which creates logistical problems as well as, you know, life-threatening ones. Actually, Kisner’s novel is about all of that and much more, and that’s what makes it such an interesting read. Let me explain.

The best thing about fiction is that it allows us to step into the shoes of people who are not us and see the world through their eyes. Ideally, this helps us understand each other better and ultimately be more empathetic. That’s why I’m always searching for stories that present characters whose life experiences are different from mine. The problem is that authors often focus too much on the experience they want to introduce their readers to, forgetting that their novel still needs to have a functioning and compelling story. When I read the description of Old Wounds, I was intrigued because it seemed like a novel that could succeed on both levels: representation and story quality. So, once I got the good news that I was lucky enough to get an early copy, I crossed my fingers and dove in. But what did I find?

I found Erin and Max, who from the get-go managed to make me root for them. I simply fell in love with how strong and unbreakable they are despite the pressure on their backs. I also loved how uniquely each of them was written and how real they felt. So much so that I always knew who was talking without once needing a dialogue tag. It was also great how their backstories were interwoven into the current events of the story, so there was always a sense of understanding of where they were coming from when they made their decisions throughout the story. This is also a unicorn of a story where the two teenagers talk and act like actual teenagers. I also think that it was a very smart decision from the author to give them opposite experiences when it comes to their transitions because it introduced two completely different perspectives and led to incredible conversations between Erin and Max.

While on the topic of characters, I want to add that the antagonist, well, antagonists, were great. I won’t go into this because of spoilers, but I loved how each of them made me ask the same question, “Why?!”

As far as the horror is concerned, I can only describe it as a cinematic experience. What I mean by that is if you are a fan of horror movies, you’ll love this. It has this very distinct small town, weird people, a creepy thing-in-the-woods vibe only a good horror can offer. Old Wounds will be a movie playing in your head as you read it. You’ll get what I mean once you read this book. Which I think you should, by the way, in case that wasn’t clear yet.

Lastly, I really have to mention the cover. This is one of the rare occasions where I actively searched for the artist to give them a shoutout. Zoë van Dijk’s work is the perfect example of less is more. The moment I saw the cover, I was simply captivated by it. It’s incredible how she was able to include so much detail and give her work so much character that perfectly described the book with such a minimalist design. Seriously, check out her other work on her website. It’s incredible. She also has a portrait of Hidetaka Miyazaki, which automatically made her reach another level of coolness.

So, should you read Old Wounds? Absolutely! Kisner’s debut tells an incredible story about two strong and resilient teenagers that is shockingly scary but not for the reasons you think.

I think Kisner has a lot of promise as a writer and I'll definitely check out his next book! Unfortunately, to me this felt a bit drawn out but also rushed? I think it would have been much more compelling a short story.