I value the opportunity I was given to read this in advance, but I still haven't read this. With so many books ahead of me, I cannot return to this title.

I really wanted to love this book, but I found the writing to be hard to get into. The way it was written made it difficult to connect with the characters, because we weren't really invited in as the reader and just made to watch.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister!

I went into the book blind and feel it is difficult to review without revealing major spoilers. But, this was wild!

The bog had belonged to the Haddesley family for years ever since their ancestor was throwing into the bog as a punishment. This punishment led to a bargain made that would last for centuries. He resurfaced with a woman, his wife, and the bog now lived within him. The tradition continued where the oldest male gets a bog wife and other siblings cannot marry.

The tradition threatens to come to an end as another elder passes, unsure if his son can keep the promise to the bog.

Folklore vibes, unsettling, and very different from what I thought I was going to be reading, but in a good way!

Thanks to NetGalley and Counterpoint LLC for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Very atmospheric - eerie and creepy. Good elements of family legacy and environmental degradation.

More horror-adjacent than true horror, imo.

I just finished The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister and was enthralled with this ethereal, fantastical fairy tale. The story follows the lives of 5 siblings living in Appalachia on a cranberry bog. They have a complicated family history and relationship with one another. I loved the connections with the natural world and beautiful prose. It is a story that will linger in my mind long after reading

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this digital ARC.

"Appalachian noir" was enough to grab my interest, but an ancient, mystical cranberry bog that produces a "bog wife" upon ritualistic sacrifice? OBSESSED. Such a strong sense of place, haunting tone, and a complicated family full of messy characters. I absolutely loved this one.

An Appalachian folk horror full of creeping and uncomfortable dread. It might not make you jump out of your seat but there is something so deeply unsettling to me about a home being reclaimed by the elements while it's still inhabited. Consider this a 3.5 star rating from me, it's one of those stories where a lot of the separate parts are engaging and interesting but after finishing it I'm not sure it stuck the landing for me.

3.5 stars rounded down

Thank you to NetGalley and Counterpoint Press for providing me with a review copy of this title. I feel like this book didn't know if it wanted to be a dysfunctional family character story or a fantasy-driven folk horror, and ultimately didn't stick the landing on either. While the setting of West Virginia's cranberry bogs was atmospheric and immersive, I didn't immediately connect with the cast of characters, which ultimately is the selling point of the book.

The plot twist at the half way mark took the plot in what I thought was a new direction, but then dovetailed to veer back into the fantasy and folkloric aspects, which felt misguided to me. Bonus points, however, for the imagery of a disgraced family squatting in their run-down ancestral manor, which is always so gothic to me.

This was exactly the flavor of creepy that I love in a horror novel. We are following a family who lives apart from the modern world, in a house being taken over by the surrounding wetlands. These wetlands have not only given them food and shelter for generations, but it has also apparently given the eldest male in the family…a wife. This was a story that gave you a sinking feeling from the very first page and it only got worse (in the best way!) It gave me a similar feeling to that of The Village which is one of my favorite horror films and is an atmosphere that I am always looking for more of! Thank you so much for this!!

I really wanted to love this book! Parts of it were really well done, like the atmosphere and the physical descriptions of the bog and the dilapidated house. The family of characters were all so odd, but of course they would have to be to live the way they do. The entire book had a dream-like quality to it, almost like looking through a haze that only gets thicker as the story goes on.
Something just didn’t line up for me to absolutely love it, but I am looking forward to reading more from Chronister.

I have to admit that I took a little time between reading The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister and writing this review. I read it during the busiest time of the semester both as a professor and as a PhD student so I wanted to give it time to sink in and marinate a little. Now that I’ve had that time, I have to say that I loved it.

The book was very unique and I do think that how Chronister approached the topic of collective family trauma was wonderfully done. I’m absolutely a sucker for broken narratives and how Chronister jumps from one sibling to another seamlessly was addictive. It reminded me of Tommy Orange’s There, There (which was one of my required books for this semester, hence the comparison).

Kay Chronister’s The Bog Wife follows the Haddesley family and the cranberry bog that they’ve tended to for generations. Their continuous care for the bog is what helps provide for them and allows them to remain separated from the rest of the world. The bog also provides a “bog-wife” through a ritual where the patriarch of the family is sacrificed so that the next patriarch can carry on the family line. However, this time the bog refuses to honor the bargain and this generation has to figure out the next steps of how and why the bog has failed to provide for them after all this time.

Reading the perspective of five siblings: Eda, Charlie, Wenna, Percy, and Nora offers a different approach to why the bog did what it did and how to fix it. Wenna is the only one who has seen and lived in the outside world and can try to heal the wounds left by the trauma of generations before.

The story is beautiful and haunting. It’s a reminder that we as humans not only need to take care of ourselves but also take care of nature as well. While nature can provide it is equally as capable of destruction, especially the longer we neglect it. The shared experience of natural destruction and the different approaches for how to “amend” the situation is so unique. I firmly believe that Chronsiter presents something wholly original and unseen before with The Bog Wife.

I highly recommend The Bog Wife to anyone regardless of what their preferred reading genre is and honestly, I would probably read this one again. There are so many different perspectives that I believe there’s stuff I certainly missed during my first read-through.

This book was fascinating. I found the plot and characters to be very interesting, compelling, and engaging. I was invested throughout the whole narrative. The setting was unique and interesting. The family history was a fascinating backdrop for the story.

I did enjoy reading this book. I love the premise of folk horror intermingled with myths and mystery. The characters were interesting and well written, and the family dynamics were heartbreaking. I think it was an interesting book, and I would definitely recommend it. I can't wait to see what the author will come up with next.

Thank you Net Galley ARC

Super creepy and filled with Gothic allure, this novel is absolutely unique, yet not totally my cup of tea.

The Haddesley family lives next to a bog in an environmentally impoverished part of WV. They have a mystical relationship with the bog. They care for it, and, in return, it provides them with a "bog wife" after the family patriarch dies. This "wife" propagates the family line. However, even though it's now time for another bog wife to come forth from the bog, she doesn't appear--and the family is scared of what's to come.

We get chapters from all four Haddesley kids' POVs, but I never felt that I really got to know any of them all that well. Wenna stood out, mostly because she was the only one who escaped the house and had intriguing stores to tell about that experience. Still, their individual personalities don't really come through all that well, so when the ending came, I was confused more than intrigued by their fates. Their characterizations are overshadowed by dense natural description and family discussions that don't add much to the overall narrative.

While this novel wasn't really my type of book, it would absolutely be enjoyed by those who enjoy modern Gothic tales, especially ones with an overall supernatural tone.

Though this book didn’t fully keep my attention, it’s a very solid piece of folky horror. Myths, mysterious happenings, tragic family dynamics. I didn’t like it quite as much as I expected, but I enjoyed it!

I liked this, for the most part but I think it’s labeled incorrectly as horror. It dragged on in parts and until the end I wasn’t sure if I liked it. It is very atmospheric but there are too many pov’s and following one could have created more tension and vibes.

The writing is good but the plot lags.

This book had a very interesting concept, and good Southern/Appalachian gothic vibes, but ultimately was just OK.

The Bog Wife is unlike any book I've read before. The Haddesley family is so isolated from society and yet so codependent on each other as their own community that they read differently from other characters. I loved that we got each of their perspectives throughout. I found each of them to be lovable in certain ways, but my overwhelming feeling towards them was pity. Pity that they had been raised on this isolated bog, pity that their mother paid them no attention and their father was cruel, pity that they felt forced by the compact to remain on the land.

I was invested in the story and them learning why the bog refused Charlie a wife. As they each unraveled pieces of the puzzle, I just became more and more ensconced in their world and unwilling to leave it (not unlike the Haddesley's themselves). The surprise after the snowstorm was unexpected to me and I felt that the ending of the book was satisfying. This is not a genre I typically read in but I would certainly read another book by Chronister. Her writing and storytelling was so captivating to me.

This gothic appalachian tale was strange, like a woman resurrected from a bog with her husband is strange and one I am not convinced worked even by the end of the book. The atmosphere was strange and scary- the ever creeping fog! The Haddesley siblings are odd and lean into what the town thinnks about them in a way that seems to be on purpose. Unfortunately none of the characters seem to land in a meannigful way and I kind of ended up hating them all in a way that I do not think was intentional.