This was an interesting read and honestly nothing at all like what I had expected it to be.

I enjoyed the author's writing style and thought that it was a great addition to have the story told from each of the siblings perspectives. I think for me the pacing was just off, the beginning was hard to get through but the last portion was done really well.

I'd definitely try another book from this author in the future.

This book was all over the place, and it missed the mark for me. The pace was uneven, which made it hard to stay engaged. So many parts were confusing. The second half was just overly repetitive to the first half. And I found the writing style choppy. This might work better as a movie than it did as a book where some of these issues might not be as obvious.

Thanks Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. Calla is having a hard time raising her younger brother. He keeps getting into trouble. A nice read.

I was lucky enough to win a copy of LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER by Neena Viel in a Shelf Awareness giveaway. Thank you for the early look, and have a safe holiday season!

Oh, this goes to some unexpected places!

It’s a very dark tale of love and rage and all things family – for good or bad!

I loved our very different siblings and found the truth of everything both heartbreaking and chilling.

Expect very current themes wrapped in a mystery both supernatural and extremely dark.

Loved this one!

• ARC via Publisher

A Black feminist horror story that takes a sharp look at the burdens women are expected to assume, carry, and succeed at without support. Viel shows how women can become fragmented, reduced into archetypes, and unheard, creating trauma that leads only to further trauma. While I feel like the book might benefit from another close editorial pass, it is visceral and fast-moving, and a solid read.

Thank you to the author Neena Viel, publishers St. Martin's Griffin, and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of LISTEN TO YOUR SISTER. All views are mine.

Jamie knew how to best help women: give them weapons instead of pacifiers. p49

This book combines a lot of different horror and weird fiction elements, from inner demons projected into reality to unplotted time travel, to create a piece of existential weird fiction that's as smart as it is riveting. It's an emotional story full of relatable characters, family to each other, and so representative of people who struggle in this unfair world.

“They tell me things[," Calla said] “Of course they do. It would be gauche to occupy your body and not contribute,” Dre said. p263

Three (or more) things I loved:

1. Calla was envious of how his bulk communicated clout where hers communicated an affinity for chicken tenders. p5 And she comes out swinging! What a powerful statement about body size, body image, and gendered power.

2. The younger brother, Jamie, is an excellent example of an unlikable lead.

3. [Dre] didn’t know what Jamie was up to, but he understood the yearning. The clawing at the base of the throat, the one that stretched and stretched because of this cursed skin, this blessed skin, and the gifts and burdens that came with it. p41 This is wonderful character development for both these brothers, and wonderful writing besides.

4. She handles busy scenes well, beautiful scenes with groups of characters.

5. Suicide is a subject that very few writers handle delicately. Many books stigmatize it, depression, mental illness, or all three. They don't plot the action, or use it as a plot device. They dehumanize the person. They demonize the person. Veil, on the other hand, treats the subject with conscientiousness of its nuance and complexity. She plots it carefully and develops the characters to respond to it with empathy. So grateful when I find this in books.

6. This author understands mental illness, and being so in a sanist and ableist world. It’s hard going about the day behind a mask, gold and shining, delicate filigree curling around the eyes, the mouth . What lurks behind is teeth, affixed to the skin, a membrane of blood behind brassy eyes. And the screams build and build, trapped behind the iron seal, and it has to be swallowed. It just has to, otherwise you would be screaming all the time. And you walk around like that. Go to work, flip some burgers. p100

7. Viel's details are so real and relatable; they add so much value to the book. She didn’t have a bra , and she ran with one arm trying to hold her breasts down. She didn’t want to knock herself unconscious. p125l

8. This book is absolutely chaos, but it's the good kind of chaos. The plot and character development are strong and solid. The whole piece moves in a predetermined direction. Veil controls the story and thus the chaos, instead of the chaos controlling the author and yanking the story around by its hair.

9. An amazing example of existential and weird horror.

10. I've never read a book that better explains the plight of the oldest sister. Parents spawned new Callas every day, women adjacent to mothers, foisted with the responsibility of raising new generations. p253

Three (or less) things I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. The author's compassion for mental illness deteriorates over the course of the story, into something more stereotypically horror trope-ish. Whoever made these drawings was a fucking lunatic. ... Jamie fervently prayed he wasn’t the fucking lunatic. p237

Rating: 🏚🏚🏚🏚.5 /5 cabins in the woods
Recommend? Yes!
Finished: Nov 3 '24
Format: Digital arc, NetGalley
Read this book if you like:
👥️ psychological horror
👤 existential horror
🕳 weird fiction
👻 ghost stories
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 family stories, family drama
👫🏾 sibling relationships, siblings as parents
💇‍♀️ young women's coming of age
😵 curses

Strange in the best ways,
compulsively readable,
witty, heartfelt, dark.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I write haiku reviews but am happy to give more feedback.

Unfortunately this book didn’t work for me. I tried for almost 3 months to read this and ended up being my first ever DNF for NetGalley, which is a huge bummer as I dearly love reading debut authors. I made it through 35% of the book (All of part one). My current typical turn around on a book is 24-72 hours, so I really did try!

I am definitely in my horror era but this books missed the mark for me for several reasons: 1) the writing style is overly complex and makes it a much slower read 2) the pacing is wildly inconsistent 3) I genuinely had no idea what was happening and what was real, it was too confusing. 4) when part 2 started, I wasn’t sure what place and time it started from, so I threw in the towel.

I do think this could make a good show or movie, given the right details and time, I kept hearing it compared to a Jordan Peele movie and I see that but the story just didn’t resonate with me.

Thank you to NetGalley and SMP for this advanced copy and while I am disappointed by not finishing I am grateful for the opportunity. I will not be posting my review on external platforms to give the author a fair shot from readers who completed the book.

This book gives a whole new meaning to the phrase, women's intuition.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book! Like most horror novels, it begins in a terribly mundane way with Calla, our protagonist, worrying over her youngest brother Jamie, who is a "troubled teen." searching for identity in all the wrong places, feeling alone and unheard. At the same time, Calla is tired and wishes her brother Dre would help her take care of her brother.

We get to go into all three of the siblings heads and see the turn as their lives go from normal to eerie to horrific, with Nightmares coming to life, visions only the siblings can see and being on the run from things they can't explain. What I enjoy most is that the author, Neeha Viel, makes it clear that the women in this world have untapped power and as Calla's Nightmares for the last few years have allowed us to see, that power isn't always used for good, but it is used for agency.

The descriptions in this novel are so vivid that you can feel everything that is happening, you can see Calla's blood-soaked foot and hear the clang of metal on metal when she crashes her car. You can feel the relief that she feels too, later in the story. It's so palpable and visceral that your heart skips a beat and you tune out the world around you. A wonderful read and I will be looking forward to more from this author!

Not for me. I requested this to read in October, as I always like to stock up on "spooky stories" to get me in the Halloween mood. This wasn't quite what I expected, and not my favorite.

Listen to Your Sister by Neena Viel is a dark and disturbing debut that takes family saga to the dark side. Calla is twenty five and at her wits end when it comes to caring for her sixteen year old brother Jamie. Becoming his legal guardian had never been part of her plans but with the help of their brother Dre, she thought she would be able to make it work. Instead she finds herself in and out of the Principal's office, and desperately worrying about Jamie and his ongoing involvement in increasingly dangerous protests, and Dre seems to have checked out of any responsibility. So far it seems like a pretty standard contemporary story about one family's struggle but then the author adds a layer that definitely shifts the book into horror territory. Calla has recurrent nightmares about her brothers, where she is forced to watch them die over and over again, and now it seems that that Nightmare is taking on a life of its own. When the siblings are forced to flee to a remote cabin in the woods, things definitely take a turn for the terrifying and I was completely hooked. Don't be fooled by the description, this is a book that is not afraid to get a little weird, and if you are willing to go with that it will certainly take you on a journey. At first I struggled a little with the characters, as none were particularly likeable and in fact I thought both brothers were abhorrent, but as the book unfolded and the characters developed I was able to see a few redeeming features. If you are patient and stick with it, the reward is definitely worth it.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

2.5/5 Sometimes books transport you to other places. Sometimes they're just words on a page. For me, this one was the later. I just couldn't get into it. Couldn't connect with the characters or plot.

4.5 stars. Outside of gnarly fight sequences and witty humor, there’s a really heartfelt story about sibling dynamics. I really sympathized with all three main characters which made this book all the more stress inducing. Slow start but the story flips around at a certain point and from then on I was hooked. Kinda like in real life, shit hits the fan and then doesn’t stop.
Listen to your damn sister!!!

I don't have any idea how to describe Listen to Your Sister in a way that would do it justice. It's a creepy, surreal horror novel that weaves fantasy horror with the real-life horror of social justice issues. This was totally different than anything I've ever read. I can't believe this was a first novel. Calla is a 25-year-old Black woman who gains custody of her teenage brother, Jamie, due to their mother's neglect. Their brother, Dre, also helps out. That's the basic plot, but there is so much creepiness. If you love horror, you'll love Listen to Your Sister.

I loved the way this book started with the different chapters between characters and that held strong throughout! I was slightly disappointed at the way they made the older sister so unlikable, but maybe that was the point. I enjoyed the spooky aura throughout and the way they’d each see things, and I think that was a very clever writing style that I haven’t quite seen before!

This is the first novel that I have read by Neena Viel. Although it wasn't a badly written book, I feel that it was very slow starter. I pushed through, and I found part of the book that I did love, but I also struggle through some of it. This book touched on several subject that could potentially need a trigger warning. I thought it would just be a creepy kind of book, but I was way off base on that. It dealt with a lot of deep issues, and It ended up being a interestingly weird book. It was written in a way that was unexpected, and it was very refreshing to find a book that you couldn't predict the ending. I will be recommending this book to other to read. Thank you Net Galley ARC!

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Listen to Your Sister.

The premise was intriguing, and though I didn't love this book, there were parts I really liked.

First, I identified with Calla very much, being the eldest sister myself and having a similar parenting-like relationship with my younger sister.

Second, the sibling bond and bickering is very realistic, as we get POVs from Calla, Dre and Jamie, we see how each of them interpret the actions and behaviors of each of their sibs in their own way.

Third, the gore and horror scenes are well described though I wouldn't classify the narrative as horror so much as supernatural, especially when the reader discovers the origins of what is happening, an interesting twist I didn't expect but enjoyed.

Not surprisingly, readers are reminded as to how much a woman, regardless of color, has to sacrifice to keep their families together.

What I didn't like:

I'm not a fan of the writing style, which was written well, but in a stream of consciousness kind of way sometimes.

I didn't like the brothers, but maybe I'm not supposed to.

I think some readers will enjoy this though the writing style takes some getting used to and the pacing drags at times, and the horror scenes feel repetitive after awhile.

I like how the premise revolves around Calla and showcases her strong will and fortitude and all she has done to protect her brothers.

“Listen to Your Sister” was so different and stuck out in the most positive way from others in its genre! I. Instantly feel in love with the character, the dynamic, and the mayhem throughout! . It was an original concept and as the story continued, became more complex, complicated, and multiple narrative tale.
My only suggestion - there were a few times the text did not quite flow right and I had to go back and reread how we got to where we are. Minor detail I guess, but I could see one getting lost or frustrated if they lose where they are in the tale.

Eh… not my cup of tea. DNF’ed after Part 1. Flipped through and I had connected a lot of the dots early on, so didn’t seem like I would enjoy finishing. This might be a book that true horror fans would really enjoy, but this more fantasy-driven girlie just wasn’t into it.

(Not reviewing on external platforms)