e-ARC, 297 pages
Release Date: April 2, 2024
Published by: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Read from: March 20-April 24, 2024
Stand-alone
Source: Edelweiss (I received a copy of this e-book from the publisher and Edelweiss in exchange for a just and honest review. This did nothing to influence my review.)
Content Warnings: Abandonment, Death, Grief, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Child abuse, Racism, Sexual content
For Readers Interested In: Classic Gothic Stories, Ghosts, Hauntings, Paranormal, Romance, 2sLGBTQ+, Racial/Ethnic Diversity, YAMagical realism meets Southern Gothic in this commanding young adult debut from Ciera Burch about true love, the meaning of home, and the choices that haunt us.
Welcome to Coldwater. Come for the ghosts, stay for the drama.
Jericka Walker had planned to spend the summer before senior year soaking up the sun with her best friend on the Jersey Shore. Instead she finds herself in Coldwater, Maryland, a small town with a dark and complicated past where her estranged grandmother lives—someone she knows only two things her name and the fact that she left Jericka’s mother and uncle when they were children. But now Jericka’s grandmother is dying, and her mother has dragged Jericka along to say goodbye.
As Jericka attempts to form a connection with a woman she’s never known, and adjusts to life in a town where everything closes before dinner, she meets “ghost girl” Kat, a girl eager to leave Coldwater and more exciting than a person has any right to be. But Coldwater has a few unsettling secrets of its own. The more you try to leave, the stronger the town’s hold. As Jericka feels the chilling pull of her family’s past, she begins to question everything she thought she knew about her mother, her childhood, and the lines between the living and the dead.
*MY THOUGHTS*
This disappointed me so much. I was in my HORROR BAG when I saw this cover and read the synopsis. So immediately I requested it. Imagine my surprise when I actually read it and there was nothing horror like there besides some ghosts. This is why publishers need to stop lying about what a book is about in the hopes to get more people read it.
I would pair this book with She is a Haunting. This book was more about the environment and elements around her being horror, but that was it. There was no eerie feeling, nothing scary, even the ghosts didn’t seem to be scary. They were more ominous and we’re never even really told what they look like or the full reason they’re there. Idk it just wasn’t what I was expecting. Had the publishers said this was just a gothic paranormal book and not actual horror, I might have enjoyed it more. Please stop doing this publishers. You’re making me rate things way less than it should be.
Other than that, for this to be a debut, I thought it was pretty good. The writing style was interesting. It was a bit repetitive, but it still kept me interested. i don’t really know a great way to explain it. Like I kept reading it enough to see where things were going with the ghosts and them, but it just wasn’t enough. And the way we never got any clear answers on things. Like we got to the end of the book and ol boy just showed tf up? That felt so random and dude. It really felt like it was a plot device because the author needed more words. Because everything else in this book was boring. I was not a fan.
The romance was the main reason I kept reading this. There’s been a lot of books that I’ve read this year that have advertised a 2sLGBTQ relationship, but it’s only hinted to or they barely mention they like each other, and I’m left spending the entire book hoping for more. This time the relationship was front and center, but the horror itself was missing. This was a very confusing type of book.
The horror itself was missing because the world building was missing. Why tf wouldn’t you lean into the cursed town? Or make the ghosts malevolent? Or even make the girl dead? I would have liked it more if the whole town was dead or something? Curse the camera for goodness sakes! But there was nothing. There is absolutely no world building and the author just relies on the ghosts to make it creepy. And while I’ve been reading a long time so I made it more creepy in my head, I know that’s not the same for all readers. I would most definitely give this to readers who are new to horror and not really looking for that creepy feel.
To say I was disappointed is an understatement. Had this been touted to me as a gothic romance, I would have loved this, but unfortunately it wasn’t. This is my plea to publishers, PLEASEEEEE stop putting stuff just so fans of that genre can be excited for it too. Because in the end we end up disappointed and leaving scathing reviews that might have been different if we had come across this differently.
Overall, I give this
