Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press/St. Martin’s Griffin, via NetGalley, for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
3/5 stars.
Okay, I’ll be honest. I DNF’d this — not because the story wasn’t interesting, not because the writing was terrible, but because I don’t do horror — and I didn’t realize this when I requested the book from NetGalley.
I wasn’t really sure what to rate this, because my personal feelings about horror definitely impact my rating. My inclination was to give 1/5 stars due to my discomfort while reading parts of this book that were graphic and gruesome, but at the same time, the writing style is good and the plot hooked me immediately. So I bumped it up to a 3/5 star rating because there’s nothing wrong with the book except that I shouldn’t have requested it since I don’t like horror, but I thought maybe I could handle YA horror better than adult horror… nope. This mistake will not be made in the future, since I always feel bad when I request an ARC to read but — for whatever reason — can’t get through it.
But I’ll admit, I was (and still am) excited about the plotline. I love parallel narratives, I love the idea of figuring out a decades-old secret… but I won’t be finishing this (sadly) because I don’t want to feed my nightmares with vivid descriptions of, well, horrifying things.
(I never read any R.L. Stine books before — the Goosebumps series was huge when I was growing up but I never read them because I didn’t like horror then. When I requested The Lost Girl, I figured that now I’m older, I could probably handle what’s labeled as YA horror. Nope. Nope nope nope. I don’t need any more fodder for my already vivid and awful nightmares.)
So if you’re someone like me, who doesn’t generally read horror and knows that novels in that genre will be “too much,” don’t make the mistake I did and see if YA horror is doable. But if you like horror, I’d say why not? give this a try
Tea and writing... 