Thank you NetGalley for an advance read copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Please, please, please work with your best editor. This copy is much too wordy. Annie Lampman would be a beautiful poet, if you could contain things to a couple pages. But 12 hours is just too much.

Rounding up from 2.5. 2 stars because I actually finished.

I did not really enjoy this book much at all. It seemed to drag on forever. I honestly did not really get what the point of the book was. I felt it was way more of a love story than a mystery at all. The ending was a nice, happy ending, but it is not at all what I expected and it was a bit boring to me.

Poetic and engaging tale of loneliness, abuse, complex family relations and finding one's own place in the world.

I really enjoyed this one! I knew I was going to love Sins of the Bees because of the subject matter. It's a story of Silva, a young woman alone in the world, who becomes pregnant as a result of sexual assault; so when she finds out about her long-lost grandmother who joined a cult, she moves close by to learn about it and find her.

There's something deeply engaging in the psychological aspect of books about cults. The existential conflicts that arise in this novel really got me thinking about my own life as well - my beliefs and my relationships with the people close to me. What's more, Annie Lampman's writing is very poetic and lyrical, which is definitely my thing. If you're into uncanny language and style, this is a novel for you.

I listened to this novel in the form of an audiobook, which I highly recommend. The narration is excellent and goes perfectly with the language and style.

*Thank you to the Publisher for a free advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

First I have to say that the narrator for this audio book did a fantastic job and really brought the story to life. There are a few spots where the story is slow and the writing overly descriptive but having such a great narrator helped with that. As for the book I love the characters and thought they were very well developed. I enjoyed the setting and found the descriptions vivid and compelling. The writing style was very lyrical and lovely but it bogged down quite a few parts of the story and I think some tough editing to cut that down a bit would have really helped. Overall though I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more of Lampman's work in the future.

“Nobody had ever warned her that in grieving the ones you’ve lost, you’re really grieving for yourself the most. Your whole world, the story of your life, shaped and defined by your loved ones’ experience of it. That without them, you can’t ever see or understand yourself fully again.” - Annie Lampman, Sins of the Bees

I listened to this on audiobook from Netgalley! For a debut, this was a pleasant surprise! I don’t read a lot of thrillers, but I really enjoyed this one! The writing style was quite poetic and I liked the dual perspectives of Isabel and Silva!

Even though this book has multiple mentions of a religious cult, that isn’t really the main focus of the story, in my opinion.

To me, it’s about the underlying meaning of fractured relationships and broken families as well as the true meaning of what it means to discover what really matters in life.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to listen!

Recommend for anyone who like thrillers!

#DreamscapeMedia #Netgalley

When I began this book earlier this week, I felt like I was a on a merry go round as a bunch of children get it going at an insane speed that make you feel sick, but you can't get off because you're going so fast, and also you need to hold on desperately because the centripetal force does not care if you go flying off.
Having put it down and then come back to it later, I find it somewhat humorous to have had that feeling, and I'm sure I wouldn't have if I had been reading the physical book as opposed to listening to the audiobook. Because in my listening I missed the point of view change from Isabelle to Silva. Instead of my brain separating them out into different people, it was trying to put the pieces together to combine Isabelle and Silva into one continuous story.

But in coming back to finish this book I found myself entranced in the story about the 12 maidens and also Silva healing from her trauma and grief. It felt genuine, and made her a much more intriguing character, especially as she is faced with more troubles.

I think the story was incredibly interesting, I'm not sure I'd consider it a Thriller... Like the growth we see throughout the book makes me feel like it is a coming of age story, but that doesn't feel appropriate as Silva is in her 20s. But also with how Lampman dishes out the ending both in the Epilogue and Before. Doesn't give the same resonance. No matter the Genre this is an interesting read,
4/5 ✰ {-1 star for not having enough bees)

Full Disclosure: I received an audiobook copy of Sins of the Bees by Annie Lampman (narrated by Cassandra Campbell) from Dreamscape Media via NetGalley in exchange for possibly writing a review.

Let me start by saying that this would probably be a five star review had I read the book instead of listening to it. There were parts I really wanted to savor but couldn't because of the format. There were also parts that made me really, really sad, and I couldn't skip over them because of the format. Maybe that's a good thing for me to confront, but it was also sort of excruciating. If you like audiobooks, don't let my issues deter you. Check this out!

What I really loved about this book was all the bee stuff. There are very few fiction books that really delve into bees with the kind of detail you find here. If you love bees like I do, you will want to give this a read. But it is not just bees, there's a cult! If you need more than bees and a cult, this book is beautifully written, and the author clearly has a strong connection to nature.

Bonus points for so much love for animals. I have a soft spot for characters who love animals nearly as much as I do.

3/5 stars

🐝 Thanks to Netgalley for providing an audiobook e-arc!


✨Now...this was awkward timing. We follow characters intertwined in different ways to a white supremacist doomsday Y2K cult. It was a good book that fascinated me, especially with Silva and Nick with their own interests. One tiny detailed adore is how meta pur protagonist is. Silva in itself means forest. At thw same time, her occupation is to study and take care of trees, bonsais to be specific. Unfortunately the ending felt a bit meh and predictable. Predictable to the point that I sort of knew it from the beginning. Not to belittle the author's ability but this was perhaps intentional and if so, props to them!

The classification of mystery/thriller for Sins of the Bees is a misnomer. While there are mystery components and suspense, I think that classification is a stretch. I would instead recommend this to readers who really enjoyed the sort of vibe of Where the Crawdads Sing (another misclassified book in my opinion). We follow Silva, a young woman who in mere months has suffered the loss of her grandfather (and only parental figure) and a sexual assault. When Silva finds letters and paintings from her estranged grandmother Isabelle she packs up and goes on a search for her grandmother and what she hopes will be answers to her history. Her search leads her to rural Idaho (think what would even be rural for such a remote state) and the Y2K cult of Almost Paradise. As tensions rise between the members of Almost Paradise, the townsfolk, and Silva the suspense of the mystery of where Isabelle is ramps up. With everything coming to a fiery end, Silva not only finds her answers but also finds herself. With heavy themes of nature coming from bee keeping and care for bonsai, Lampman creates a lyrical and blossoming literary journey for readers. As always, Cassandra Campbell's narrative voice brings what was already a strong story to an even higher level. Again, while I was incredibly engrossed and greatly enjoyed the title, if you go in expecting a typical mystery/thriller you will be disappointed as this title should really be classified as literary, in my humble opinion.