The Furies is a book of teenage friendships and how they can enrich or destroy lives. Violet is an unfortunate young girl who following the death of her Father and sister in a car accident in which she was the sole survivor, leads a lonely uninspiring life. She excludes herself from school, choosing to self-educate until an opportunity to attend prestigious Elm Hollow presents itself. Violet immediately identifies with a group of girls who are aloof and stand apart from the rest of their peers. They are outwardly confident, adventurous and rebellious. Violet's desperation to be accepted by this clique sees her experiment with cigarettes, alcohol, drugs and supernatural rites. There is also the mystery of a former friend who disappeared, which Violet shares a striking resemblance to.
The Furies examines the importance of peer acceptance and how the teenage years can easily spiral out of control. The joy of a friendship can sour quickly or be manipulated and girls can be allies and enemies at the same time. There was a nod to witchcraft and I think this could have either been given more space to develop or left out entirely. The dark gothic feel was achieved before the dark arts were fully introduced.
The Furies was a good read, with plenty of teenage angst and tragic incidents to keep me hooked to the end and Katie Lowe is definitely a talented Author that I will look out for again in the future.

The Furies opens with the discovery of the body of a 16 year-old girl posed on a swing in the grounds of the prestige Elm Hollow Academy. Someone knows what happened, but no-one is talking. The story is told by present day Violet, who is looking back on the events leading up to the murder in 1998.

The Furies is an atmospheric tale of death, witchcraft and intense female friendships.

I found this a little slow, to begin with, but once I was into it I loved it. A little slow towards the end, but a worthwhile interesting read. Recommended.

I really enjoyed this book. The characters were appealing and well written and I felt immersed in the story throughout the book.

It is said that the word 'furious' came from the three Greek goddesses of vengeance. They were known as The Furies and they were the Avengers of Greek mythology: a moral avenger of anger, an avenger of jealousy and an avenger of murder.
Before the story begins there is a description of a dead schoolgirl sitting upright on a swing, ankles neatly crossed as if she is still alive. Something here is not natural. Then the tale opens when a sixteen year old girl joins a public school, eager to settle in and make friends following a family tragedy.

None of the schoolmates are particularly likeable but one is very manipulative. There is a hint of something cult-like when the small group of four friends are signed up to extra artistic tuition by an art teacher. They are introduced to mythology and the occult.

Unfortunately it is almost half way through the book before anything significantly unusual or magic happens. Until then the first-person narrative takes us through first time experiences of parties, periods, drugs, drinking, vomiting and unsavoury teenage boys. Immensely tedious and slow, with several characters chewing their thumbnails and smiling weakly, I was tempted to stop reading as I was obviously too old for all this. Yawn.

But I am a stoic reader and carried on. I had to find out about the girl on the swing and the Greek mythology.

And then - suddenly - everything changes. The Furies are summoned, there is an animal sacrifice. There is vengeance against individuals and men generally, jealousy, anger, fear, validation and guilt. The story whirls through a hazy, drug-induced frenzy where boundaries between life and death are tested, the simple and naive party antics replaced by something more daring and sinister. The children have become adults.

​The writing too, has upped the tension, no more repeated phrases, pulling the reader on, challenging reality. At times disturbing, not just because of the murders but the anger and power that motivates these young women.

​Definitely a new writer with great potential. Recommended.

#NetGalley #TheFuries

I was obsessed with this book - loved the gothic witchy themes. Definitely a great comparison to The Craft and The Graces. Highly recommend!

Murder, a private girls’ school with magic, mythology, and toxic female friendships? Yes please. All of this in a novel by an author doing a PhD on female rage in literature? Double yes please thank you. Ticking all of the boxes, Katie Lowe’s debut The Furies* is set to be one of the biggest novels of the summer.

The main protagonist is Violet, a lonely 16 year old living in an anonymous run-down seaside town–all grey rain and ramshackle misery–the ‘kind of place people [go] to die’. Her father and young sister were killed in a car accident, causing her mother to go into a downward spiral of depression and grief, losing herself in a security blanket of alcohol and rarely moving from the sofa, oblivious of what her remaining daughter is doing. A compensation pay-out from the accident pays for Violet to go to the nearby Elm Hollow Academy, a typically-prestigious girls’ school standing on the location of the burning in the seventeenth century of an alleged witch. When Violet is befriended by wild child Robin and joins a super-selective ‘study group’ run by their enigmatic art teacher Annabel, she discovers how friendship can descent into obsession and how far her new friends will go to protect their group–and themselves.

The Furies is a beautifully-written novel with real promise. Lowe really captures the hyperbole and drama that surrounds teenage girls and their relationships, especially with each other. Violet’s character is somewhat overshadowed by Robin’s dark exuberance, but she does make a excellently unreliable narrator, looking back on her teenage self with the dubious benefit of hindsight. I wish that Annabel had been more developed as a character, and that more was made of the mythology aspect; the plot also occasionally takes a back seat to the gorgeous prose.

Overall, though, this is a gloriously dark and twisted exploration of girls discovering their power and pushing back at their boundaries.

The Furies by Katie Lowe, published by HarperCollins, May 2019, hardback, £12.99

The Furies is a YA novel about 16 year old Violet, the only survivor of a tragic car accident that claimed the life of her sister and father. Her poor mum isn’t coping very well and Violet is sent to Elm Hollow Academy.

Drawn into a gang of girls, who really aren’t good for her, they introduce her to smoking, boys, drugs and of course witchcraft!

The story is told by Violet, as an adult she is re-visiting her memories of this time...and is a tale of toxic friendships, cruelty, fear and coming of age...the life of a 16 year old.

I would like to thank the Author/the Publishers/NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book for free in exchange for a fair and honest review

ho wouldn’t want to be a part of the cool kid’s clique at high school?

I mean, I wouldn’t. They were far too intimidating for nerdy little me. But you can see why people look up to them. Want to be them. But would you kill to be a part of them?

The Furies is a creepy, dark, Skins-meets-The Craft take on what life would be like if you could (possibly) do magic. It’s set in a sleepy English seaside town (though, to be honest, this came as a surprise to me. I thought it was set in America) with an elite girl’s boarding school. This is the school that Violet joins, soon after the car crash that killed both her sister and father. She soon finds herself drawn to an elite study group held by the art teacher, Annabel, and soon things start to spiral…

This book is all about how toxic female friendships can be. Lowe does a great job of portraying the nuances of Violet, the narrator’s, friendship with Robin, but Violet felt like a lost soul, in thrall to her darker, more interesting friend and to Annabel. Her rebelliousness, taking drugs and sleeping with boys, feel more like petulant foot-stamping than a woman coming into control of her own agency.

That’s not to say I didn’t like it. Though the storylines can be a little cliché, Lowe’s portrayal of a group of damaged adolescent girls is fascinating, especially the way that they play off each other as they start to flirt with the idea of witchcraft. I could relate to a lot of the dynamics in the group from my own time at school (though massively watered down, of course) and their slow spiral from rebellious teens to dangerous liabilities was fascinating to watch.

I also loved Annabel’s discussions of women over the ages. The idea that women have been taught to put aside their power, to suppress it when they should be embracing it- and how they’ve been portrayed in classical literature to boot- was really thought-provoking, a dark undercurrent to the girls’ actions. What they’re doing, after all, is just the latest iteration of a history of female revenge. I especially liked how nebulous the witchcraft in the book is- is it happening, or is it all in their heads? Either way, the girls are determined to make their darkest wishes come true.

By the end of the book, I was hooked. The Furies is one of those slow-building thrillers that sucks you in. Well-written and twisted, it taps into the darkest fears- and wishes- of teenage girls, with devastating results

The new girl at school struggling to find her tribe is befriended by a trio who enjoy dabbling in witchery – so far so The Craft. Thankfully, Katie Lowe’s debut novel isn’t a rehash of the 90s movie but instead is an absorbing take on toxic female friendship, infatuation and rage.

Set in an English seaside town in 1998, The Furies opens with a striking visual image – a dead 16 year old girl, found posed on a swing on school property with no obvious bodily injury. Four people know the identity of the girl and how she died and through flashbacks our protagonist, Violet, narrates the year leading up to that fateful night.

Violet joins the most prestigious of all girls’ schools – Elm Hollow Academy – following the death of her father and younger sister in a car accident. She’s reserved, withdrawn and lives with her mother who is so consumed by grief she barely registers Violet’s existence. At Elm Hollow the teenager therefore finds herself drawn to her polar opposite – the gregarious and loud Robin, who welcomes her into a private study group she attends with friends Grace and Alex and led by enigmatic art teacher Annabel.

During their private tuition the foursome learn about the mythology and witchy history of Elm Hollow and find themselves drawn to teachings on ‘the Furies’ – also known as the Erinyes, the female deities of vengeance. As friendships intensify the girls call on ‘the Furies’ to wreak vengeance on those who have wronged them. There are moments of real horror in Lowe’s prose, as she details the unravelling of the girls’ psyches and descent into violence.

The Furies examines the toxic form that some female friendships can take as well as class, privilege, obsession and anger, which are both timely and timeless themes. With the characterisation of Violet and Robin being so vivid, and their friendship so intense and suffocating, it unfortunately makes the characters of Grace and Alex feel two dimensional at times.

Despite this The Furies is an assured and at times haunting debut, that will stay with you long after you’ve put the book down.

This book just wasn't for me. I loved the premise of this, however, I just felt that this had all been done before. I couldn't connect to the characters and unfortunately this just really underwhelmed me.

This was such a brilliant read. Katie Lowe has delivered a solid and well written book here. People should definitely read this novel like NOW!

You know, The Furies was not what I expected. I'm not one to properly read the blurbs (because I'm too scared of the spoilers) and when I skimmed through the synopsis I noticed my buzzword "murder" I was sold. I kept putting off reading it because of mention of witchcraft, which I'm normally not very keen on.

But let me tell you, I really enjoyed it. I actually found it very interesting to read about the history of witchcraft; plus the narrative drives very little on actual witchery and black magic.

I enjoyed the tone of the voice the narrator carried the story throughout the book. I loved the poisonous friendship between the group of girls. Do you remember feeling the ultimate need to fit in with your peers? When you would've done anything to be accepted and loved. Yeah, that!

I really liked the characters, it didn't feel like too many unnecessary names were introduced, so it was easy to remember them all.

My only criticism is that I found the sentences very long and distracting. There were parts of the book where I started to skim through the text because the "waffle" got a little tiring.

I probably wouldn't read it again, but I would recommend picking it up if you're after a YA mysterious thriller, that includes toxic friendships, murder and a little history about witches.

"Everything comes to nothing, everything perishes, everything passes, only the world remains, only time endures."

This book wasn’t exactly what I was expecting it to be but I did very much enjoy it. It follows Violet, a teenage girl who is trying to come to terms with the loss of her dad and younger sister in an accident. She moves to a new school and there she meets Alex, Grace and Robin. She’s soon a part of their clique, and yet someone always on the periphery because she doesn’t know all of the secrets. The school has a dark history, the site the school stands on is the scene of where a witch was supposedly burnt in the 17th century. The witchcraft forms a part of the girls’ obsessions and things get dark. Once I got into this novel I found it hard to put down. On the surface it’s another novel about girls gone bad but actually it has so much more depth to it than that; it’s a real exploration of what makes people tick and how others can get drawn into things that they know they shouldn’t be doing. I recommend this one!

Toxic friendships, peer pressure and bad girls, taken to the very extreme. Dabbling with drugs to be part of the popular crowd is something, but witchcraft and murder? This makes it so much more exciting. I loved how it was a book about friendships and trying to fit in while also being a book about murder and summoning ancient beings of vengeance at the same time.

I loved how awful Robyn was. How toxic she was and how she just kept pushing the girls further and further into witchcraft and worse. I liked the relationship between all four girls to be honest. But Robyn's interactions with each of the girls was the most interesting.

The only problem I really have with this isn't really a problem at all. I'd like a good witch book about nice witchcraft and real Wicca, but this wasn't it. It was a great book regardless and I'm really happy about how good it was.

To be totally upfront this book wasn’t for me. All though to be fair to it I’m not sure I am the intended audience. I don’t mind darkness in a book, but I found this book disturbingly, cloyingly dark and permeated by a bleakness that didn’t let up from start to finish. There are no redeeming qualities in the characters, in fact they often come across as highly unlikeable and it’s because of this that I couldn’t hitch my emotions wagon to any of them and really engage in their stories. I had also expected more of a supernatural angle especially given the references to ‘The Craft’ movie - this feels like a bit of a red herring.

However, to caveat because I don’t want to just rubbish this book, it may not be for me, but it will find an audience. To the authors credit it is beautifully written and captures a specific period in time. The relationships between the girls definitely come from a place of experience and I think these relationships will be familiar to many and definitely engage this audience.

A not for me ⭐️⭐️ out of five.

I enjoyed this modern take on the Furies of Greek mythology - an evil bunch. Added into our story were modern day elements of neglect, a need to be accepted and possibly abuse. I particularly liked how the character narrating, did so from some point in her future.

Parts of the story appeared dark and sinister and yet others seemed almost childlike and the reader is left thinking, no, this could never happen. Depends on your take on life and whether or not you believe in coincidence?

A different kind of read and enjoyable for teens and adults alike.

A book which I feel has been written complicatedly? Maybe other readers like this style of writing, unfortunately, I don’t. I had to reread some parts a couple of time, a lot of confusions along the way. Admittedly, when I first read the book, I didn’t like it at all. I closed it after chapter one. But since uni is finished for the year, I thought I’d give The Furies another go before putting it on the DNF pile. I’ve managed to finish it, yay! I really wanted to know what happens to the character and the truths behind the deaths.

The characters…wow. I never disliked so many characters in one book before. I honestly don’t like any of the characters.

Violet was a girl who very much wanted to fit in, to feel wanted and to be loved. Her mother had withdrawn from the world, after the death of Violet’s father and sister. Violet’s mother left her uncared. Yes, it was unfair that her mother treated her this way, but it was no excuse for Violet’s behaviour and the choices she made. Her judge of characters was terrible. I think she knew she was treated badly or knew the actions of her so-called friends were bad, but she didn’t do anything about it. Robin, Violet’s new best friend was definitely mentally unwell. The girl needed help. Her actions scared me because they are rather unpredictable.

The book is meant to be about four girls, however, it was heavily revolved around Violet and Robin, and Violet’s obsession with her new friend.

I feel like the witchcraft in this book is not as oomph as I thought it would be. A little disappointing. The Furies is a mysterious, creepy and dark story. It contains toxic friendship, witchcraft, and sex. Although I skipped the sex parts, so I can’t tell you how detailed it was.

Received a copy of The Furies through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, Katie Lowe and HarperCollins UK for the opportunity.

I absolutely adored this book, the perfect mixture of witchcraft and a secret society which are two of my absolute favourite elements in literature.

I really wish I'd loved this one!

I was so excited for a Craft-esque story of teenage toxic friendship and magic, but I found both aspects to be slightly lacking. I couldn't understand the pull that Robin had over Violet, as she really wasn't presented as being very appealing, even in Violet's unreliable narration. I get that teenage girls often have love/hate relationships, but I didn't see enough of anything except hate! The other girls in their group stayed mostly in the background, so I didn't have much of a chance to connect with them. Violet made endless bad decisions that made me lose sympathy for her very quickly, and I didn't think her backstory really played much into the plot.

Magic-wise, I enjoyed it, but I just wanted more! It's left ambiguous as to how much of the magic that the girls do is real, and how much is self-fulfilling prophecy, or more like giving themselves permission to do the things they ask for. I'm not a fan of books with physical murder, and I would have liked this to be more on the magical side.

I could not work out the setting. At times it seemed very British, but at others, it was very American. I didn't understand the college setting as they weren't the right age for it to be American college, but if it was a UK college, then the details were all wrong, from having a Dean to the year being in semesters. It may not bother other readers, but I found it extremely obtrusive that I just couldn't get a fix on it.

Overall, this wasn't bad, it just really wasn't what I was expecting. It read more like an attempt to update The Secret History than a story of witchcraft, which may be exactly what someone who's not me is hoping for - in which case, great! But it only gets three out of five stars from me.