Debut author, Suzy Aspley, introduces us to ex-journalist Martha Strangeways as the protagonist for a new series. Crow Moon, set in the fictional Scottish village of Strathbran, follows the death and disappearance of three teenagers against an ominous backdrop of folklore and a hell of a lot of crows.

Full review: https://westwordsreviews.wordpress.com/2024/10/16/crow-moon-suzy-aspley/

This is a wonderfully atmospheric and eerie book. It has a fictional setting, but the author does a great job of describing it and the area, that she had me convinced it could be real!

One of the best debut crime books I have ever read.

Cannot wait to see what else this author writes.

Crow Moon is a dark and twisty ride and I enjoyed following along with Martha Strangeways for this one! My full review will be coming soon and I will update once I get cross posted on socials!

This was a real struggle. I've given it several tries and can't get on with the writing style - it's stilted, with no flow, and the characters are not enough to make up for it.

Many thanks for allowing me to try it. No negative review will be posted online.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book.

I think I'm definitely in the minority here so I'm willing to say it's me, not you, Crow Moon. I wanted to love this. But I struggled all the way through.

Pros: great setting, full of potential. Interesting premise. A murder story that is also spooky-adjacent. Loved the cover art.

Cons: I couldn't relate to the protagonist at all. We're told from the first that she's lost her very young twins--in a house fire!--just a year ago. Her partner at that time was also terribly injured. She's taken a year to recover and is getting her journalistic wits back about her as she races against time to save not only a missing teen but, by the end, her own (older) son as well. I know, I know--who am I to say how someone should grieve. But . . . Martha Stangeways seems pretty okay for someone who has endured what I can only imagine to be the worst hell a parent could endure. And this horrific exposition seems to do little for the current story--I can't figure out why such a completely devastating and life-changing event would be added to a character's background for it do to so little in the current plot. And either Scottish lawmen are really, really bad at their jobs or Martha has some amazing influence to be able to infiltrate herself as she does into the case. (And were we supposed to find the police man lovable? Or just a dodo? I'm not sure--I was infuriated by his work.)

Anyway, I kept getting hung up on the above things and found the story was TOLD way more than it was SHOWED. I give full credit for the great ideas that went into this, but it just didn't hit the right notes for me.

I was gripped by this book right away, it definitely had me feeling uneasy and creeped out which kept me reading all the way through,

Crow Moon is a great thriller with a eerie witchy vibe.

It is based around Martha - who used to be an investigative reporter and her son. A teenager is found dead and many go missing in dark and twisty circumstances. Martha is drawn to the investigation and tries to work along side the lead police officer manning the case to figure out what is going on and who the killer/abductor is.

I really enjoyed this read, all the twists and darkness to the plot kept me turning pages wanting to find out what was going to happen in the end. The characters were well developed throughout and I loved the 'witchy' aspect to it.

This book had a great plot with intriguing characters. I’ll definitely be looking out for more from this author.

Martha Strangeways stumbles across the body of a missing teenager with a poem written on his back ...

Amazing debut! Gothic feel. Beautiful Scottish setting. A mix of police investigation, folklore, and a bit of witchery. Loved the characters. The author did a wonderful job building emotions and tension. A great read!

On the whole, this was a good read. I wanted to love it because of the court and blurb but some things in the plot jarred with me. The police telling a known reporter so many things about the investigation is odd and implausible. I couldn't get past that, unfortunately.
I did enjoy the folklore and spooky aspects of the novel. I liked the main character too. I would read the next in the series because this author has writing skill.

This is a well executed blend of crime thriller and folk horror that leans heavily on the folk horror. If you’re looking for a well-paced thriller with creepy atmosphere to boot this is the book for you. Highly recommended.

I liked the sound of this book, so I took a chance even though it’s not really one I'd usually pick up but I'm very pleased that I did.The story was filled with plenty of mystery with a supernatural edge and a large dose of folk law.
It was a slow start, but the tension built up nicely and held my attention till the end.
Martha Strangeways is an interesting woman, and I'm looking forward to reading more about her in the next book in this new series.
This was a really good debut novel that took me by surprise with a culprit I didn't suspect at all.
Thanks to Netgalley and Orenda Books/Independent Publishers Group.

Crown Moon isn’t typically a genre of books that I would choose to read, but I really enjoyed this book. I would describe it as dark and Gothic and I did enjoy it.

Three teens conduct a ritual during the Crow Moon to put spirits of the dead to rest. They are observed and from then, their lives change.
Fraser disappears and is found by ex-journalist, Martha Strangeways, who carries the remains of her late twins in a matchbox.
She decides to investigate the death of Fraser, and doesn't realise how close the case actually is to her family.

This is a very dark novel, with a Gothic feel. I enjoyed every page of it. It is mysterious and emotional, and very atmospheric.

I definitely would like to read more of this authors work. I was gripped and sometimes the tension forced me to put the book down and take a deep breath.

Thanks to Netgalley and Orenda Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Did I read the same book as everybody else? First let me say that I adore the cover. Amazing design. Between the cover, the description and the rave reviews I was beyond excited to read this book. Even the name "Strangeways" had me excited. Then I started to read. Now, I know this is an ARC, but to my understanding it's been published in the UK so I assumed that it would be a corrected copy. However, it needs a lot more editing to be polished. It's very repetitive, full of typos and there are multiple instances of someone asking the same questions or being told information they have already been told. For example, Martha is told by the police what drugs were found in Fraser's system then later she asks the detective if he's heard anything about the drugs and he tells her again what drugs toxicology found in his system. She gets called down to the station to come look at photos, then when she gets there, she says something like, "has there been an update? I assume that's why I've been called in." You're there to look at photos Martha.

Also, the cops are completely incompetent. They decide on a suspect, with very little evidence, and when Martha asks them if they asked the suspect about the poem, they say they haven't because they don't think it's important. Really? A person mixed together ink and blood then precisely wrote a poem on their victim's back and you doubt it was important to the killer? That makes sense. Once they have their suspect and another kid goes missing, they don't think he could be in danger or that it's related even though he hasn't been seen in 3 or 4 days because they have their man!

Martha annoyed me too. She's already lost two kids in a fire and teens are being abducted, but she doesn't pay much attention to her son. She doesn't even know where he is half the time and doesn't check that he made it places safely when she should have. At one point she overhears an important phone call but won't ask her son about it because she doesn't want to admit she eavesdropped on his conversation. Who cares if it helps the case and saves anyone, right? More than once when she's talking to someone, she refers to Fraser's abduction and murder as "that Fraser thing" or "the Fraser stuff". Way to be super blase about the murder of your son's longtime best friend!

I also never understood why the police were so willing to tell Martha every detail about the investigation. It seemed highly unlikely. The characters have absolutely no depth either. Oh, and the author severely underestimates a dog’s nose. When Martha was in the woods and could smell a corpse, she was glad the dogs hadn’t smelled it yet. If you can smell something, your dog smells it too and has been able to long before you could. They’re just ignoring it. I was really looking forward to reading a thriller with some Scottish folklore mixed in, but nothing about this worked for me. It could have been a good story, but it's so poorly done that I can't recommend it in its current state at least. I'm truly shocked by the positive reviews. Honestly the only thing I liked was the cover. 1.5 stars.

Thank you NetGalley and Independent Publishers Group for the ARC!

Crow Moon is an occult crime fiction story featuring black magic, dark rituals, and the secrets lurking in every family.

Crow Moon is centred around Martha Strangeways, a grief stricken ex journalist in a small town in Scotland. When she stumbles upon a dead body she gets pulled into the investigation which soon becomes a haunting mystery where a killer may be on the loose involving some local teenagers, a folk legend, and dark witchcraft.

I normally don't like crime fiction, but the supernatural elements of the story drew me in. The occultic aspects involving rituals, witches, and folk magic were creepy and created an eerie atmosphere. The twist at the end was good and I liked how we the readers were left with some unanswered questions regarding the supernatural components.

If you like crime fiction with a spooky twist, then you should definitely read Crow Moon.

This one was fairly well written and quite enjoyable, and definitely worth a read if you're looking for good time!

Child loss is a heavy theme throughout the book, so just be aware of this before you go into it, if that could be upsetting for you. The mystery that unpins the entire story is really strong, but I guessed who the killer was a good way before the end of the book. A brilliantly dark and ethereal debut. I look forward to reading more from this author in the future.

Suzy Aspley has created an interesting new series (hopefully it's a series!)

Crow Moon is the marking the end of winter. In this tiny village in Scotland it also seems to signal danger. Martha is an investigative reporter who is on leave after the deaths of her twin toddlers in a housefire. Her instincts kick in however when her son's best friend goes missing. Before long she is working in tandem with the local police and forced to deal with some of the grief that she has yet to address. Who is taking the young of the village and why?

It's a gothic style story but more mystery and police procedural for me. I wanted to shake Martha a bit a few times but that might be a cultural misunderstanding. All the same, I loved her and hope she finds herself into another mystery. I enjoyed it completely!

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