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 🩹💔.

The Underwood Tapes feels like a book that exists in between places. The setting is the perfect place for the otherwordly events: a small town where everyone knows each other but no one leaves and where everyone dodges the truth and the obvious. I think it fits well with the theme. First and foremost, this book is about grief. And grief, most of the times, feels so big and encompassing that it can not be of this world.

As regards the writing, I've been a fan of the author for a while and I quite enjoy their writing, though this time I've noticed longer and more in depth paragraphs. This is not a bad thing, but proof of DeWitt's power to adapt the writing to the more heavy themes. Whilst their other books were lighthearted and fun, this one takes a darker turn and so the writing and the narration follow it too.

As for the characters, the book centers mostly on Grace and Jake, hence these are the two I felt most connected to. Grace, in particular, since she is the narrator and the story starts because of her and her pain. I think she was written perfectly, especially for the moment in her life in which she finds herself - a moment that, most often than not, comes when we least expect it and smashes everything else to pieces. And DeWitt described it perfectly.
As for Jake, there is something to be said about the character whose fate we know since the beginning but can't help but root for a different ending. Like in real life, though, the different ending doesn't come. That doesn't change anything he was before or during and his resilience and strength in pushing through.
As for Lara and Griffin, I didn't care much for them until the end. They were there to serve a purpose and push the story along and it didn't feel like anything else to me. Their attitudes at the end changed that.

Overall, while this book takes a darker turn than the author's usual works, I quite enjoyed it and I think it was perfectly done and written. It completely encapsules everything there is to grief, mixed with a little bit of mystery and time-breaking rules.

"The Underwood Tapes" is a story about grief and loss, and as such it feels weird to say that II enjoyed reading it, but alas. It isn’t anything revolutionary, but then I don’t think it intended to be. It is very readable, the characters are loveable and the story flows well. The main relationship between Grace and Jake felt very fleshed out and genuine, which is good, as it is the driving force in the story. The other relationships were often a bit one-note, but that didn’t really impact my reading experience.

Something that people might struggle with is the magic/sci-fi time travel aspect of the story. Personally, I’m usually the kind of reader who wants everything explained, especially mechanics that are as crucial to the story as time travel is in this book. However, I found that I really did not mind the fact that it goes unexplained here. It was clear that the focus of the story were the themes of grief and loss around the two main characters, and not whatever mechanics that allowed them to converse across time. While an added explanation of the time travel aspect could have elevated this book to a 5 star read for me, such an addition also runs the risk of completely ruining a story if not executed well.

Throughout the book I always figured that Jake would somehow survive, as is typical of YA books, which made his death just hit extra hard. Ultimately, I did really enjoy reading the book, even if it wasn’t perfect or overwhelmingly extraordinary, it was very nice and I’m happy I read it.

★ ★ ★ ★

“How bad do things have to be that you have to manipulate space, time, and your teenage mother, just to assure yourself that you’ll survive it after all?”

This book was so good. The whole time, I felt like I was in that one stand-off scene from The Office. The Underwood Tapes was a bit out of my comfort zone, but it was a welcome change in pace from what I have been reading recently. I was familiar with Amanda DeWitt from her previous novel, Wren Marin Ruins It All, so I was excited to read what she had written next.

It took a second, but I was fully invested in Grace’s story, her navigating trauma and grief related to losing her mother, and how the mystery of the Underwood family and the small town of Hermitage unfolds. I annotated so much with all my predictions and analysis; it was a blast to read. I only wish we saw more of the side characters, Lara, Griffin, and Oliver, involved in solving the mystery with Grace.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the eARC.

The Underwood Tapes is a small-town mystery about three generations of people. We have Grace, who lives in 2022 and is transcribing old tapes recorded by Jake Underwood, who used to be friends with Grace's mom, back in 1991. The tapes mention a so-called hurricane club, a group of people from the same generation as Grace's grandfather.

My favourite part was the way Jake and Grace communicated through the tapes. It was the part that made me want to read the book in the first place and it did not dissapoint.

The mystery did disappoint a little. It got me thinking, which is a rare thing as I usually just wait until the story unfolds itself but I do wish it had a little bit more of a plot twist to it. I guess my mind wandered a little too far.

Thank you NetGalley and Peachtree Teen for giving me access to an e-arc for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

Thank you so so much to Netgalley and Holiday House for the e-arc!!

I wanna say that this is somewhere between a 2 and 2.5 stars

I was really hyped for this book. The cover is stunning, the plot and sci fi elements sounded really cool, and I was really looking forward to becoming invested. I would say this book started out pretty well, the plot was fairly slow but I didn't mind it at first and was actually enjoying it and I was really looking forward for it to build up. And at that time I felt like the characters were interesting, the plot was interesting and the slow pacing was a nice change as opposed to the fast-paced fantasy that I usually tend to read. With that being said around halfway through I realized that the pace wasn't going to pick up and unfortunately that's the point that I stopped enjoying it.

There was this whole mystery that was barely explored and I honestly just think this book could have been better and has so much lost potential. I think the characters are good and I was attached to them but they could have been so much more fleshed out. I did genuinely tear up at certain moments and find certain quotes HIGHLY relatable (which is why I feel even more like that goes into the lost potential of this book). The writing was actually pretty good. The plot is interesting, the Sci-Fi elements were very doctor who-esque and arguably my favorite part of this whole book, but at the end of the day this was just too slow for me to enjoy. And I cannot stress that enough. Over the span of over 300 pages barely anything happens (apart from consistent minor events and minor investigating) and I would have enjoyed the plot and the characters SIGNIFICANTLY more if this book did not sabotage itself with it's pacing.

This book is very character based which would have been fine except the internal dialogue becomes really repetitive and sort of single faceted (hence the lost potential of actual character growth and depth). I understand that this story was about grief and about mental struggle and hardship and loss but because the book was so focused on that we really didn't get much of anything else other than internal dialogue and events that didn't further the plot most of the time. By the end of this book I just was just pushing through to finish it. I did enjoy the ending but WE NEVER FIND OUT HOW ANY OF THE TIME STUFF EVEN HAPPENED? HOW DID THAT EVEN HAPPEN?

HOW WAS IT POSSIBLE?? LOVE??? GRIEF???? I DON'T KNOW *CAUSE IT WAS NEVER EXPLAIIINNEEDD*. Cool concept but SERIOUSLY WHY DID DEWITT NOT EXPLAIN ANY OF IT. LIKE OKAY I GUESS I JUST HAVE TO ACCEPT THAT IT HAPPENED JUST CAUSE.

Anyways, I was really looking forward to this book and had another book by this author on my TBR but unfortunately this was a huge disappointment. Again if you enjoy character-based books I think you would like this more than I did, but the absolute lack of events and lack of the plot actually progressing was incredibly frustrating. And so if you can really get past all of that and only focus on the characters (which in my opinion were not multi-layered and became stunted at a point) or you're just interested in reading a story about grief and a sort of Coming of Age then by all means check this out. But for me personally I started to enjoy it less and less as I read it, and based off of all of the elements that I've mentioned put together and the elements that this book was lacking I can't in good faith truly recommend it as a book that I enjoyed as much as I could have. So overall, this book had so much potential with the plot, characters, and twists, I found it to be super emotional and relatable at times, but it was just too slow for me to enjoy.

And will ultimately go down as a book that I COULD'VE enjoyed more, but one that has so much lost potential and not a good enough execution for me to have done so.

P.s: Despite all of this, I still think I'll think back on this book when I see a cassette tape

First I’d like to start by thanking Netgalley for sending me this copy. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a formatting error and it became really hard to read after about 40% because I felt as though it was distracting me from the story. Sentences were randomly cut off in the middle and continued on the next line, as well as some random spaces that appeared to be separated paragraphs but were actually just large breaks between sentences. Unfortunately it became so disruptive to the point where I wasn’t retaining any of the actual content in the book. I’m not sure if I was the only one experiencing this issue. However, the story up until that point was gripping and I can’t wait for this to get published so I can pick it up again soon. Exactly what I was hoping for and the writing was very immersive without being confusing!

“The Underwood Tapes” by Amanda DeWitt is a genuine, bittersweet exploration of grief. The concept of this book is very intriguing, as it canters around a mystery and a friendship that defies the bounds of time. DeWitt did an excellent job with this book, and I am excited for more people to get to read it!

I didn’t have a chance to read this before it got archived!! So sorry but super excited to read it when it comes out(:

The one and only reason that lessened my enjoyment of the book and made me bump it down from a 5-star to a 4-star: the formatting is absolute shit. The publisher only lets you download this as a pdf or to the netgalley app, so I could only read it on my phone. The screen is small enough but the font is minuscule. I had to zoom in for every individual page. At one point I connected my phone to my laptop screen and read from there. This was an unnecessary hassle as the book doesn't even have any illustrations, which is the only reason I could think of to not let me send it directly to my kindle. What the fuck, publisher.

Everything else I loved. This is set in a small town, and by uncovering a mystery with the main character you end up knowing lots of people who live there, and it doesn't feel overwhelming at all. There are many characters to keep track of, but it's only one POV and you discover the family trees of everyone along with the main character, so it was never confusing to me.

The speculative aspect was well thought out, and made sense within the story. I like that, when I thought "hey what if she did this?" to circumvent the rules of the time travel, the main character did in fact try to do that and it was showed why it would or wouldn't work. It wasn't afraid to explore the limits of the timey wimey wibbly wobbly stuff, so it didn't feel dumbed down, like oh the reader would never wonder this so I'm not going to include it. It also didn't try to overexplain it, so it sits comfortably in the speculative side of fantasy.

The mystery kept my attention the whole time, and every time I put down the book I was like "wait, I read THIS much???". There are a couple subplots and themes thrown in there for when the main plot needs a rest, and they're all well-woven together, which is a must if you're setting your story in a small town.

Overall I really recommend this book, even if you're not into YA. I will be pestering my favorite booktubers so they read it once it comes out lol.

When i saw the "If you liked You've reached sam, than this book is unskippable" i immediately decided to read it. The idea was amazing. LIke Youve reached sam, we got characters talking to each other through tapes. At some point the book was at its peak for me, i was very interested, kindle in the hand curled up in the bed but then it took a full 180 degree turn. I think storyline and the writing just fell plat and unnecesary details?
But all in all i am satisfied with the storyline and o.m.g the cover looks damn good? YES>>>>>>

I don't think this book could've made me cry harder if it tried, and that's saying something. It is so beautifully written, and I very much loved it.

This book swept me up in it so so fast, from the slight mystery or intrigue surrounding the main character to the tapes to the everything of it all. I was hesitant on the ending, but after reflection I think that I actually liked how it ended. But in general the novel sweeps you up in its twisting and lovely mystery that I read in one sitting.