Amanda DeWitt is now one of my auto-buy authors with this latest book, The Underwood Tapes. I read Aces Wild a couple years ago, skipped over her sophomore novel (which I obviously must go back and read!) and picked up The Underwood Tapes as an ARC a few weeks back.

The way DeWitt writes grief, particularly the way you compare what you don’t have to what others do, is very accurate. When people complain about their parents, well, at least they have parents to complain about. I love how Grace explores her grief through the lens of discovering more about Jake’s past than her own. Unfortunately for her, there are triggers everywhere, since Grace’s mom was Jake’s best friend. Every picture of them together, every mention of them, brings Grace’s emotions to the surface. I feel like she’s using the Underwood mysteries as a cover for her own grief and perhaps to connect with her mother.

Jake is really funny. And Grace, when she gets comfortable, gets pretty funny, as well. Their banter across the universe and the decades is quite a comfort. They’re both going through major losses and don’t really have anyone they can talk to. Both have friends, of a sort, but what’s happening with the tapes, and also the loss of a parent, is just too much to talk about face to face.

As close as Grace was with her mom, they didn’t talk about Hermitage at all. What happened to make Haley not talk about it? Why would she not speak about her clearly happy childhood and her best friends? What happened to Jake’s uncle, Charley? Why did the entire town blame Jake’s dad for what happened? Why does no one talk about anything real, ever? Not all of these questions are adequately answered, in my mind. The ending of the book felt incomplete. No explanation for how Jake and Grace were able to converse was provided. Grace settled into Hermitage very well but didn’t find as many answers regarding Jake as I would have liked. Certain things are swept under the rug that really shouldn’t be. One backhanded comment does not absolve you of a literal crime. Grace’s dad was all but forgotten, as were her future plans.

The quick and unsatisfying resolution brings my rating down a little. The Underwood Tapes was a quick and enjoyable read, dealing with heavy topics like injury recovery as well as parental loss, grief, depression, panic attacks, and dissociation. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is a little more removed from their loss, if they’re using reading as a method for coping. Grace’s emotions are incredibly well described, as are the sensations of a panic attack, and I can imagine that they would trigger someone who isn’t on firmer footing with their grief. Thank you to NetGalley and Peachtree Teen for the opportunity to read this ARC!

The Underwood Tapes is a captivating novel that blends mystery, time-bending elements, and emotional depth, keeping you hooked from start to finish. The story follows Grace, a young woman struggling with grief after the tragic death of her mother. In an effort to heal, she spends the summer in her mother’s hometown, where she takes a job digitizing a series of cassette tapes from 1992. These tapes, recorded by Jake Underwood, alert Grace to the town’s long-buried secrets—and, in an unexpected twist, she can communicate with Jake across time through the tapes, forming a connection that transcends the years.

The unique premise of Grace and Jake communicating through the tapes is one of the book’s most intriguing aspects. This time-bending interaction creates a fascinating dynamic between the two characters and weaves the story together with a touch of mystery and supernatural intrigue.

While the dark undertones of the novel, rooted in Grace’s grief and anxiety over her mother’s death, can feel heavy at times, they provide essential depth to the character. Grace’s emotional struggles are integral to her journey, and they help explain why the relationship with Jake becomes so important to her.

The small-town setting was another highlight. The author captures the essence of a tight-knit community where everyone knows each other, everyone is related, and nobody ever leaves.

The development of Grace’s relationships, particularly with her colleagues at the historical society, was another great touch. It felt natural and meaningful, offering a contrast to the deeper, more personal journey she was undergoing.

The pacing of the novel was strong. The suspense and the slow reveal of hidden truths kept me engaged throughout.

Overall, The Underwood Tapes is a heartfelt and mysterious read that mixes supernatural intrigue with emotional depth. It’s a story of grief, connection, and uncovering the truth. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys books that combine historical elements with modern twists, and those who are looking for a story that isn’t afraid to dive deep into its characters' emotions.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for providing this ARC.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Peachtree Teen for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

This book left me well and truly SHATTERED!!

The prose, the pacing, the characters - everything was spectacular!!

I cannot recommend this book enough!!

I read Wren Martin ruins it all and I love it and for weeks my mind kept going back to it. So I was excited when the author announced her newest book which comes out next month on February 15.

You can feel the work the author put in from one book to the other and how the story evolved.

This book is a mystery, thriller with some comedy in the middle.

It talks about Grace who recently lost her mother to a car accident. Wanting to be away from home she goes to the town where her mother grew up in and one summer left. She went to work at Hermitage Historical Society transcribing old tapes hoping to have the most normal summer possible. But that stops being possible when she discovers she can talk to Jake back 30 years in the past through the past. Uncovering secrets that were unspoken and never to be spoken aloud in that town where something was being hidden. And she was gonna find out what.

I love the evolving relationship between the coworkers she has at the Hermitage Historical Society and how you can see their relationship going from coworkers to actual friends and how at the end they’re there for each other.

It explores grief very beautifully and how if you don’t stop the bleeding from a wound, the blood will spill into the future generations. A delightful read with an amazing that had me hook from the start.

Baby steps. One foot in front of the other.

80/100 or 4.0 stars

I was not sure what to expect going into this, but I had such an emotional rollacoaster ride! There was comedy, there was tragedy, there was love, there was all of the feels. I enjoyed this story so much, despite the fact that the set up in the first third feels like a concept that has been done a few times before.
The writing was enjoyable and engaging. A lovely YA story that I would like to get my hands on a physical copy at some point!

this book is INSANE. i am an amanda dewitt stan first and a human being second, so there was no doubt going into this.
the plot was interesting, unique, and so fun. the characters were dynamic, well-written, and felt fully developed.
i was hooked from the very beginning, and when the end happened i felt like i was missing a part of me because i was so invested in this story.
cried, laughed, celebrated, and thrived.

This was fantastic and beautiful, and I liked it so much that I pre-ordered a finished copy before I even finished reading it.
There's just something about Amanda Dewitt's writing that speaks to me. It's funny and sarcastic and a little dark, and it always has so so much hope and love. While the characters in this one weren't as strong to me as in her first two books, I still really liked them and rooted for them. I liked seeing Grace and Lara connect, I liked watching Grace slowly open herself up again. This is my kind of fantasy story, where the magic is whimsical and the heart is truly there.
I mean personally, do I have any idea at all how any of this worked? No. Not even a little. But I don't think that's cause it wasn't explained well. I do not understand anything to do with time and the bending of it. But I was along for the ride anyway and I am so happy that I was.
I love the way Amanda's books explore the different kinds of love and friendship, and while none of the characters in here are explicitly asexual like in her past two books, this book still shows us such a unique and beautiful take on love. Grace and Jake have such an interesting and odd relationship- two people bound by the magic of what's happening and by the pain they've felt. It's crazy to me that Amanda did such a good job portraying love and kinship between two people who never actually meet.
Honestly my total thoughts on this are simply that I would like to read everything Amanda Dewitt ever writes forever and ever thank you

4.5 ⭐
AH! I enjoyed this book so much and know younger me would've loved it even more. Ate it up in one sitting! I don't even know how to summerize it without giving any spoilers; however I will say this:

*FMC solves mystery by communicating with a person 30 years in the past via cassette tapes*

If that sounds like something up your alley, PICK THIS UP!

This was my first Amanda DeWitt book, but definitely not my last.

Thank you Holiday House / Peachtree / Pixel+Ink | Peachtree Teen and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This was such a haunting read, it dealt with so many dark and poignant topics but it handled them very well. Definitely a very emotional read overall.

Graphic: Loss of a Parent, Grief, Car Accident, Death, Panic Attack, Disassociation, Derealisation.
Moderate: Murder, Blood, Injury Detail, Medical Content

Thank you Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Representations: https://trello.com/c/AFPp8tnh/132-the-underwood-tapes-by-amanda-dewitt

Read this in 2 settings, half of the book each time. I got absolutely HOOKED!

It's a little hard to keep track of who's who over 3 different generations but there's not too many characters over all. Mainly just a couple different "generation lines" and the rest of the characters were easy to keep track of. Trying to work out how each character was related though.. I gave up on that fast but I think that's the point 😂
They were pretty nice to read though, not too tropey and were different enough from each other. Grace being the POV was nice, she didn't read too young and had a good amount of wits about her. The emotions, the grief, the generational trauma running through the town was really well written imo and it ties together really nicely. The cover also not having Jakes face is just perfection ngl.

The story was one hell of a ride. I can't say I read the description of this - if I did I'd entirely forgotten by the time I got to reading the book lol - so I went in blind. When I got to the hook of this book, I legit just like, put down my e-reader for a second and just knew this book is gonna be fantastic. Did not disappoint at all! The pacing kept up, it does feel like things are slightly too convenient at times but I get it tbh. Things don't get explicitly explained though but personally I'd say it's a very satisfying ending anyway that works very well. I think an actual explanation of how things happened wouldn't be good as well and it's absolutely not neeeded.

I did just love this though. I loved the nerdy parts, I loved that there wasn't romance in it and instead the emotions is all about processing the grief, trying to find light in darkness and human connections through barriers - time or otherwise.

4.5 ⭐️ such a beautiful book about grief

Thank you netgalley for the earc

Who know me knows that Amanda DeWitt previous book Wren Martin is one of my favs ever, so i was kinda anxious to read this one because i didn't know what to expect.
This book is totally different from the previous ones but i loved it nevertheless. It was such an emotional read that sometimes hurt even if i wasn't it expected to.
The mistery part got me gripped to the book to see what would happen.
The ending left me so sad but also hopeful T.T I'm glad Grace became friend with Lara and Griffin.
I loved Jake character so much I wish I could have get to know him better <3

3.65 stars. This is one of those books that’s kind of a throw away read. It’s fairly interesting and not super good but not bad, but you’ll forget everything that happened in it after a while. I liked it, but the ending upset me. What was the point if it all ended the same anyways. I liked their characters and the tape plot, but that was quite annoying.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this story.
SPOILERS TO FOLLOW

JAKE AND THE REST OF THE UNDERWOODS DESERVED BETTER!!!! I kept wishing that something Grace said would trigger a paradox so that Jake would actually survive the story. I really REALLY enjoyed him as a character and wish we could have had his POV. I kept anticipating it but everything was fully from Grace's POV. I think the story would have been THAT much more interesting if it'd been told from Jake's POV too. The generational trauma in this story was so sad to read about. I really wish the Underwoods had had some sense of justice for what was done to them. Griffin an Lara were really good characters too and I wish we saw more interactions between them and Grace.

Books with sleepy small towns are some of my favorites, especially when these towns have a mystery hidden below the surface. The Underwood Tapes feels like listening to one of those podcasts with a plot line and a full voice cast, just in written form. Grief is one of the main underlying themes in this book, a heavy fog that settles on the shoulders of our main protagonists, Grace and Jake.

When Grace Crain moves to the town of Hermitage, Florida, over the summer, she hopes it’ll be a respite from the reminder of her mother’s passing. Yet everywhere she goes, the townsfolk only seem to see her as her mother. After her uncle gets her a summer job at the Municipal Building, Grace sets to work transcribing the archive tapes so they can be digitalized. While she expects this to be boring work, she quickly realizes there’s a mystery on her hands, and that the boy recording the tapes 30 years earlier can hear anything she records on them.

But the disappearances of Charley and Jake Underwood are something the town doesn’t want unearthed. It’s up to Grace and a pre-disappearance Jake to discover what truly happened, and who the members of the Hurricane Club truly were.

I thoroughly enjoyed this! My only gripe is that the conclusion of the book wasn’t as satisfying as I hoped for, in wording as spoiler-free as possible. Thank you to NetGalley and PeachTree Books for taking a chance on me and letting me read this!

This story is pretty heavy, dealing with the deaths of several people, so be prepared to cry. In particular, a massive part of the book is Grace dealing with the death of her mother in a car accident. I thought this was written very well, showing the everyday impact on Grace's life months later.

The story is also filled with wibbley-wobbley timey-windy… stuff. Very Doctor Who-y. I was on the edge of my seat the whole, totally riveted, but also filled with dread and foreboding the entire time. I do think the ending wasn't super satisfying, after I spent the whole book hoping for... a certain thing that is a massive spoiler.

Overall I liked the book and I would recommend it, especially for the target audience (teens). I've read every book by Amanda DeWitt and I look forward to reading more from her in the future.

Thank you to Netgalley and Holiday House for the ARC.

Tropes :
-YA
- Mystery / Thriller
- Small town
- Grief
- Found family
- Time "travel" - Two people communicating through tapes

It was an enjoyable read. I really liked the mystery aspect, as well as Grace and Jake’s relationship. They’re both hurt and broken, and it feels like, even before speaking for the first time, they’re stuck in their pasts. I also enjoyed the author’s writing style. The time travel element was well done, although I felt it wasn’t explained enough.

The main reason this is a 3-star rating is that I was honestly a bit bored during the first 30% of the book. It felt like not much was happening, and there were a lot of names, places, and information thrown at me without a clear purpose. Because of this, I didn’t really care about the other characters or the slow revelations about them. I was mostly interested in Grace and Jake’s chapters (together, not separately. I would have loved to get Jake's POV too. It would have added a lot to the story and would probably have made me more attached and invested.

I think this one just wasn’t for me, but with a little more action, I could have really enjoyed it. It felt pretty slow for the first half of the book.

I don’t read many mystery/thriller books, so I couldn’t predict everything, but while some elements weren’t surprising, others were and kept things interesting. Again, I really loved Grace and Jake as the main characters—the pain and grief they share, as well as their developing, somewhat shy friendship, is so sweet. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys mystery, thrillers, small-town settings, and time travel elements in their books.

In The Underwood Tapes by Amanda Dewitt, Grace moves back to the town where her mother grew up. There was a horrible car accident in which her mother died but she survived. Grace gets a job at the library transcribing cassette tapes for the Hermitage Historical Society. While dealing with grief and anxiety, Grace stumbles upon a town mystery and develops a friendship with Jake Underwood. The weird thing about it is that he’s alive in 1992 and Grace is in 2022. Hello, Doctor Who. This story was inventive and interesting. I liked that instead of wallowing in grief, Grace found something to look forward to. ARC was provided by PeachTree Teen via NetGalley. I received an advance review copy and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Four out of five stars

Grace lives with her uncle in the small town of Hermitage over the summer where she takes up a job to digitize old cassette tapes from 30 years ago. To leave some mark in the world, she records a greeting on one of the tapes. What she didn’t expect: Jake Underwood, recording all those tapes in the first place, is answering her from the past.

It took me a little to get into the story but once I was sold I enjoyed it a lot! The beginning is a little slow but the more we get to know about the mystery around Jake and the so-called Hurricane Club, the more intriguing it gets. The mood is more broody and stormy (hehe) which is quite different from the books I usually read. But I guess that’s the beauty of auto-buy authors: they make you read books you might usually not have.

I liked Grace as our MC. She is still grieving a loss while trying to solve a time-bending mystery. Her friendship with the people in town grows a little awkwardly but in a way that made total sense to me! Sometimes you just gotta warm up to the people around you and they have to warm up to you, too. The way DeWitt makes characters interact is one of my fave things in all her books.

Jake is an interesting character to meet because .. well, he lives 30 years in the past! So we have to puzzle the pieces together that we get from the tapes bit by bit. I was rooting for him, tho, the kid doesn’t have it easy…

So if you’re into small town mysteries with a melancholic undertone, I fully recommend this read!

A teen girl deals with the grief of loosing her mother by transcribing the town's old cassette tapes but stumbles upon an unlikely connection to a boy from 1992....and a strange time bending relationship begins as they both try and uncover the mystery of the town. Grace is a eighteen year old girl who has taken a summer job in to transcribe cassette tapes for the Hermitage Historical Society. It's the perfect job to distract Grace from the grief of losing her mother in a car crash. Yet as she begins transcribing she begins hearing the voice of Jake Underwood, a boy from 1992 who can hear anything she records despite thirty years of time between them... they begin a conversation with one another. Jake needs Grace's help, he has a mystery to solve and in Grace time, no one talks about Jake... they both have to find answers but can they? Unfortunately this one was a miss for me, the mystery felt lackluster and Grace doesn't really do any investigating. I just didn't find myself all that sucked into the book and the story the way I wanted to be. I did like the relationship between Jake and Grace and the portrayal of grief in the story. It's a nice book but it just didn't fit my taste and didn't really suck me in unfortunately.

Release Date: February 4, 2025

Publication/Blog: Ash and Books (ash-and-books.tumblr.com)

*Thanks Netgalley and Holiday House / Peachtree / Pixel+Ink | Peachtree Teen for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

I'm unwell

I loved this book and everything about it. I felt like I was in Hermitage with the characters watching everything happen in front of me, the first time Jake answered Grace I had to keep reading, their relationship was just so so beautiful, and thats why it's so painful, even when I knew from the start what was coming. 💔 The depiction of grief is done amazingly well, looming over both Jake and Grace, giving them the feeling that even in their loneliness they're always closer to each other than they are in reality. I couldn't help to get mad together with Grace, as she searched for answers everyone wanted buried, and understanding why they wanted so, seeing all the pieces get together 🩹💔.