Cover Image: Dark and Shallow Lies

Dark and Shallow Lies

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Member Reviews

Really good gothicy feeling mystery. Unique setting as well. Quite dark and brutal but once started reading hard to stop. Not too many likeable characters but so well written it doesn't matter. The morally grey ares worked really well with the tone and the setting. A compelling mystery with some good mythology and magic added in.

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Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with this eArc!

This was very spooky and dark, I will definitely be looking out for more books by this author! Super atmospheric

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Amazing amazing amazing book! Read this books in a few days as it kept me gripped and I just wanted to see where it went. Loved everything about it the characters, the mystery, the quirky little island. It just kept me guessing and I can’t wait to read more from the author! Definitely a must read book! Amazing work!

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I was hoping for a good mystery, with lots of clues to work everything out but instead I got a light paranormal, somewhat horror or thriller - which is still good, just not exactly what I expected. It was definitely thrilling at times and I found myself getting a bit scared, or creeped out, but I didn't really care about what was happening or who people were and how things played out

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I was really excited for this book, however I finished it feeling slightly underwhelmed. Whilst I enjoyed the mystery, my main problem was how slow the pace of the book felt, and I did struggle to finish it. Overall this book was okay, but I don't think it's something I would read again.

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4.5 stars

When Grey returns for the summer to her hometown of La Cachette, the psychic capital of the world, it's not the same without her best friend, Elora. But Elora went missing six months earlier and nobody has any idea what happened to her. Even in a town full of psychics, no one has any idea. But as Grey keeps digging, she finds the people she's known since she was born are holding out on her, and she's not quite sure she wants to know their secrets. But she needs to, if she's going to find out what happened to Elora.

I'm going to start with why this isn't a 5 star read for me. It was a teensy tiny bit slow. It's not that nothing was happening, just it wasn't happening fast enough for me. I was hankering for plot developments and mysteries to be revealed and it wasn't as snappy (aligator pun not intended) as I would have liked. But that was it. That was my only qualm.

Onto the good stuff:
This was so atmopspheric, from the summer heat to the boardwalk and swamps and the category 5 hurricance, I loved how La Cachette came to life and how weather was used to cement you in the story.
Elora, because she's already dead, isn't actually in the story, but I feel like she was through her friendships with the other characters and how they remember her.
I adored the relationship between Grey and Hart - once childhood crushes, they're not sure how to navigate themselves as they reach adulthood with the grief of Elora, Hart's stepsister, between them.
Each family has a different power, whether they feel fear, hear the dead, can control weather or something else, but learning about these powers and seeing them in action was so fun!

While this is dark, magical, and would make a perfect autumn/Halloween read, I thinnk you could also read this in the dead heat of July and it would complement the time of year just as well.

Overall, I was gripped throughout and couldn't guess where all the little threads would end up and how it would come together, but it was such a good ending! Highly recommend!

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I was originally drawn to Deep and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain because of the beautiful cover, but knew I had to read it as soon as I read the blurb. A murder mystery set in a town full of psychics, right on a bayou? How could I not read it? And it was absolutely incredible!

Grey lived in the small town La Cachette - the hidding place - right up until she was eight, and her mother died by suicide. Since then, she's lived with her father, but would return to the bayou, go back home, every summer, to live with her grandmother. Back to where she belongs, back with the other Summer Children, her friends who were all born in the same summer. Only this year is different. Six months ago, her best friend Elora disappeared without a trace. La Cachette is grieving, and Grey especially so. But as Grey tries to piece together what happened that night, she discovers links to La Cachette's past, a past dark and full of secrets, and a stranger who connects them all. La Cachette's lies are slowly rising to the surface.

Dark and Shallow Lies is a slow burner. It's not action packed until quite near the end, but quiet and atmospheric, and utterly gripping. Grey's grief is palpable on every page, but she simply cannot accept that Elora is gone, and that's it. She needs to know what happened, to find out where she is, even as she she slowly comes to accept that Elora is most likely dead, and she's determined to discover the truth. But La Cachette has been looking for Elora for six months, what is Grey likely to find that they missed? So not a massive amount happens in the great scheme of things; Grey works at the Mystic Rose, her grandmother's shop, she hangs out with her friends, and she gets to know the stranger living out on Keller Island, Zale. Her friendships are different, especially with Hart, who was Elora's step-brother. Elora, Hart, and Grey were inseparable, and Hart is struggling just as much as Elora. Their relationship is strained; they're both lost without Elora, and only each other really understands the other's pain, but there is always that missing part. Add the fact that Grey has always been a little bit in love with Hart, an everything gets a little complicated.

As the weeks pass, Grey learns slithers of what happened that night, along with the flashes she's now having. In a town full of psychics, Grey was the only one who didn't have any kind of ability. #hart is an empath, and can feel others' emotions like they're his own; Elora was a water witch; Honey, Grey's grandmother, is a medium and gets messages from the dead; Sera and Sander, twins, get visions that they translate into art; Mackey gets death warnings just before someone dies; Case can bilocate, be in two places at once. But Grey has spent her whole life being the odd one out, until now. Now, she's getting flashes, visions of the moments just before Elora's death. Little glimpses that give her very little information. But with her flashes and the slithers she learns from the people of La Cachette, and about the town's past, she tries to piece things together. And I right along with her.

I cannot tell you how many times my theories changed. I stuck with two most of the time, and kept switching between them as I read. I would be so sure about who the murderer was, but then we'd learn something that would make me doubt it, make me think is was something else, and become so sure again, only to end up doubting again. Back and forth I went throughout the whole story. I never knew who to trust, and Myers Sain kept me guessing right up until the very end. And I was completely wrong! We start to get some answers throughout the last 30% of the story, several reveals, and even as we got answer after answer, I still wasn't entirely sure who the murderer was, still going back of forth, to the point where I was at a complete loss as to who bloody killed her! But the reveals kept coming, and it just blew my mind. Dark and Shallow Lies might be a quiet slow burner, but my god, is it intricately plotted! When the pieces finally start to full into place, it was shock after shock. Each reveal just bowled me over, and I am just in such complete awe of how Myers Sain created such a story! Looking back over the whole thing, all those tiny slithers, all those subtle hints, and the red herrings! Dark and Shallow Lies is a goddamned masterpiece!

I also need to comment on the amazing symbolism. La Cachette is white all over, all of the buildings, the boardwalk the town is built on to raise it above the water level, everything. But underneath the white paint, the wood is starting to rot, and the wood is crumbling away - to the point where it collapses underneath Grey's feet at one point. While it looks so clean and pristine, underneath, La Cachette is rotting. Literally and figuratively. The secrets of the past are eating away at the town, and it was just so apt that the floor is literally crumbling away beneath them.

I can't not talk about the setting itself either, which is a character in itself. The Mississippi River, the bayou, Li'l Pass, the wetlands of Keller Island. Grey's love for the town, and where the town is located is just as strong as her love for Elora, and it breathes with it's own life. It's knows La Cachette's secrets, it knows them in it's bones, and I couldn't help but think that it had it's own opinion about what had been going on there. The hurricane that starts up and heads La Cachette's way over a number of days is no coincidence, not when the water turns on the town.

I stayed up late to finish Dark and Shallow Lies, because I couldn't put it down as things were revealed, and I just had to know. And then I lay in bed for ages just thinking about it. Not just about how intricate and clever the plotting was, but just how incredibly heartbreaking this story is. I absolutely could not help but hurt for the characters. It's so overwhelmingly sad; what happened in the past, what happened six months ago, and what is happening right now. While the reveals were all completely shocking, they were also unbelievably tragic, and I was just so overcome. This book really hit me like a ton of bricks.

Dark and Shallow Lies is such an incredible story. Expertly crafted, keeping you guessing until the very, very end, and but also absolutely agonising. I completely adore this book, and cannot recommend it enough. Ginny Myers Sain is not an author to miss, and I will look forward to whatever she writes next.

Trigger & content warnings: This book features vomit, blood, self-harm, domestic abuse, gun violence, arson, almost drowning, and infanticide.

Thank you to Electric Monkey via NetGalley for the eProof.

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When Grey returns to her bayou home La Cachette to stay with her grandmother for the summer, she longs to find out what happened to her best friend Elora who had been missing for months. She starts having psychic visions (par for the course in the self proclaimed most Psychic town in America) of Elora’s final moments, and tries talking to her other friends who live there all year round to find some answers. Unfortunately, this small town is filled with secrets and as Grey begins to uncover the truth, danger lurks just around the corner.

Atmospheric and tense, I couldn’t put this book down. I felt Grey’s frustration that in a town full of psychic, no one seemed to know what had happened to Elora. I will look out for more books from this author. Thank you to #NetGalley and the publisher for my free advance copy in return for an unbiased review.

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It's hard to pin point exactly what I loved about Dark and Shallow Lies, but most of it comes down to the incredible atmosphere. The setting of this book was what truly made it shine amongst other YA supernatural thrillers. Set in the psychic capital of America, small town of La Cachette, the story is set in the deep, dark swamplands of Louisiana. The town feels run down, yet with an undercurrent of magic. Built along a jetty and surrounded by alligators, the story feels completely withdrawn from normal time and suspended in its own reality, with subtle supernatural threads woven through the characters.

The impending hurricane weather gives a rising crescendo to the story, with a feeling of dread settling over the story. The murder mystery was also so atmospheric, with spooky snippets seen through the eyes of the victim placed throughout the story. The actual mystery plot, and the character relationships were great, but the atmosphere and the beautiful, emotive writing were really what brought Dark and Shallow Lies to life.

I absolutely loved my time slowly devouring this story, finding myself completely sucked into the dark and dreary setting. It felt so claustrophobic and unsettling, and I was totally transported. I highly recommend putting this one on your spooky season TBR for mysterious boys, missing girls, and a setting that will give you chills.

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Thank you to Net Galley and the publishers for sending me a copy of the book in exchange for a review.

This was deliciously dark and I loved it. Grey was a bit flat in the beginning but after getting to the 35-40% mark she started to grow on me.

I absolutely loved the plot and the setting - I was transported to a humid swamp with things lurking just out of eyesight.

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Dark and creepy, this debut novel is perfect for later in the year as the evenings get darker. Unfortunately I'm a big coward so had to read it during daylight hours so that I could actually sleep at night ...

A little bit of fantasy and a lot of thriller, this was a gripping book that certainly kept me on my toes! I'd recommend it to anybody who loves a sinister atmosphere and complex characters!

I received a copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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As spooky season is now on the horizon (so excited!), I am now craving dark, strange stories. It has been a while since I read a magical YA thriller but that’s exactly what I was expecting from this book.

In the town of La Cachette in Louisiana, it seems that everyone has some kind of psychic ability. This is where Grey is from but now, she only spends her summers there with the rest of the summer kids. But her best friend Elora disappeared six months ago and she can’t believe that no one in this town of psychics knows what happened to her. When a mysterious stranger appears, Grey becomes convinced that La Cachette and its inhabitants are hiding something incredibly dark at the heart of its past.

One of my favourite things about the book was the vivid setting of La Cachette. I have been lucky enough to visit a few southern American states and this strange, mystical little town mirrors the places I saw perfectly. Nothing ever changes in La Cachette. Despite the magic and occult dealings that go on there, it’s still a sleepy, close-knit community that has been the same for decades. There is a comfort about that predictability but there is also a very real sense that there are a lot of terrible secrets hidden underneath this strange little town.

Later on in the book, we learn that La Cachette ignores the true horrors that everyone knows happens in the town. For a small community, there is very little sense of friendship, particularly between the adults. Everybody seems to be out for themselves and I’m not sure I’ve read a story about a small town where this is so obviously the case. It made for an interesting dynamic but I’m not terribly sure it really rings true.

Grey has started to see Elora’s final moments and this prompts her to think that her friend is still alive and that she is trying to tell her where she is. Despite the fact that Elora is always in a terrible situation when Grey sees her, Grey still has faith (or perhaps doesn’t want to face the truth) that she is out there somewhere. I did wonder whether it would turn out that Elora was being held hostage by someone but as the narrative continued, that began to seem less likely.

Hart is a long-term friend of Grey and he is also Elora’s stepbrother. He is portrayed as a typical handsome, rebellious teenage boy and naturally, Grey is in love with him. While he does seem to be a brave, thoughtful young man who cares deeply and wants to help his friends, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something untrustworthy about him. I just couldn’t warm to him and therefore I couldn’t possibly want Grey to be with him, which the narrative kept flirting with.

Another thing that I really enjoyed was the use of local folklore. I love little-known but very dark stories and seeing how they fit into a place’s history. In this book, the story of Dempsey Fontenot is deeply entwined with what’s going on in the present and I desperately wanted more details of what happened to him, so I could figure out what had happened to Elora. He is painted as a scary villain and I was intrigued to see whether he would bring a supernatural element to the book.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Grey and she sometimes said and did things that I didn’t really understand. She sees Hart in a fit of anger and by this point, she knows that he can be violent and aggressive when he’s like this. Yet she reassures a frightened little girl that Hart won’t hurt another girl. Maybe she was lying to comfort Wrynn but it didn’t really feel like that. It felt like Grey was being really stupid and blindly believing that Hart was actually a good guy.

Dark and Shallow Lies is a mystical thriller that is shrouded in a thick layer of smoky darkness. The characters are very cookie-cutter and the story isn’t terribly unique but the setting and spooky folklore keep it entertaining enough to carry you through. It’s very slow paced for a thriller but I think that might be due to the dullness of the characters. Perhaps if Grey and Hart had been more complex, intriguing people, I would have turned the pages faster.

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'Dark and Shallow Lies' by GInny Myers Sain is a bold debut thriller. The community she establishes is full of intriguing characters, all with various magical gifts and psychic connections to the spirit world. It is less these characters that define this book and more the tense and oppressive atmosphere which bears down on the reader on every page. This sense of claustrophobia is partly due to the Louisiana heat but equally due to the secrecy and lies which permeate through this small town.

Grey was born in the small town of La Cachette, along with nine other 'summer children'. She returns here every summer, this particular one haunted by the disappearance of her friend and twin flame Elora. Despite living in a town of psychics, no one knows why Elora has vanished and an intense blue-eyed stranger starts to linger around Grey... Did he have something to do with the disappearance? And how is he linked to the secrets of the town's past?

The set-up and mystery is certainly intriguing and the atmosphere of dread was well-drawn. However, this book is incredibly slow! We never really flashback to the past to get to know Elora and so my concern for her wellbeing was unfortunately limited (Apparently she was an amazing person though! You will have to take the other characters' word for it). This is similar for the characters in the present - 2D shapes who never really move beyond a shallow description of their magical gift and seemingly surface character traits. (e.g. Hart is gruff and angry, Evie is childlike and wistful, Grey is easily infatuated...) In addition, the plot reveals happen in a rush in the last 5% of the book. These twists are barely hinted at prior and come out of nowhere so feel less satisfying than they could have been.

Overall, many will enjoy the twisty plot and intrigue of this thriller. Unfortunately, the plot was too slow throughout and the characters not developed enough for me to be truly invested in the outcomes. It was, however, well written so I look forward to seeing what Myers Sain produces beyond her debut. 3 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher who generously granted my 'wish' provided an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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I was really excited when I heard about this book. It sounded like something I would really enjoy. And I did. It just didn’t live up to my expectations. It felt slow and bland in some places but all in all it was a good story with good plot development and character development.

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I got this title through a wish a few days before archive day so I haven't had the chance to finish it yet. I'm just over halfway through and what I've read so far is atmospheric, mysterious and I want to keep reading. I have theories - so many theories - which is always a good sign.

There are a lot of the elements you'd find in a "standard" YA mystery, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - and it's nice to have a setting that, while it is a small town (well, tiny really), isn't set amongst a friendship group in eg. a small midwestern town's high school.

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Dark and Shallow Lies is an enchanting and profoundly spine-chilling Southern Gothic debut young adult thriller simply oozing atmosphere and the supernatural; it is undoubtedly one of my favourite books of the year so far. It tells the story of a teen girl who disappears from her small town deep in the bayou, “where magic festers beneath the surface of the swamp-like water rot”. Seventeen-year-old Grey’s annual visit to La Cachette, Louisiana is different this year. This tiny town, where she spends her summers helping to run her grandmother’s spiritualist bookstore, is the self-proclaimed Psychic Capital of the World—and the place where Elora Pellerin, Grey's best friend, disappeared six months earlier. Elora and Grey had been nicknamed twin flames as they had both been born in the same hour on the same day. Together they were birthed as part of 10 youngsters throughout a single summer and became known as the Summer Children. It's a town of only 106 inhabitants, every one of them bears magical powers and strange abilities such as prophetic insight and bilocation. As Grey digs into what happened to Elora that night, it becomes clear to her that everyone is hiding something: her grandmother; her childhood crush, Heart.

Even her late mother, whose secrets continue to reverberate through Grey’s life from beyond the grave. And when she unearths a connection between Elora’s disappearance and a pair of grisly murders from 13 years ago, Grey realizes La Cachette’s past is far more present and dangerous than she’d ever understood. The town’s watery secrets don’t lie as deep as some of its inhabitants may think... and although everyone seems to have something sinister to hide it begs the question: how do you keep a secret in a town full of psychics? This is a compelling, wickedly twisty and darkly atmospheric thrill ride set in the bayous of Louisiana in a tiny little town modelled on the real-life Floridian town of Cassadaga. It's an enthralling and spooky small-town supernatural mystery thriller that will leave readers stunned as La Cachette’s secrets reveal themselves. An intensely romantic and richly atmospheric read full of twists and turns with a simmering undercurrent of magic and mystery that will keep you guessing, while it also explores the shifting nature of family and community in a small town where grief, secrets and traumas have been passed down through the generations.

Myers Sain has woven an astonishingly brilliant debut that I simply couldn't put down so much so that it took me rather by surprise. The masterful and descriptive sense of time and place is spellbinding and you can almost taste the crawfish, hear the live Zydeco and marvel at the alligators that creep across the road in the bleak of the night; instilled with Cajun and Creole myth and legend as well as language and culture, the taut and suspenseful narrative moves at quite a clip. The swampland is at the heart of the landscape in the book and the magical La Cachette has a town square lined with fortune tellers, astrologists, palm readers and all sorts of interesting little shops. I couldn’t put it down after reading the first page and it kept me awake all night. Its intensity, atmospheric setting and expertly woven supernatural backdrop make this the perfect crossover novel for both the YA and adult audience and the beautifully developed cast of characters is vivid with each coming alive on the page. It's a book that is bound to get readers talking. Simply stunning; I can't recommend this highly enough.

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Ginny Myers Sain debut nove lDark and Shallow Lies is a dark, atmospheric and creepy novel with a supernatural twist that had me on the edge of my seat and looking over my shoulder to make sure no one was staring at me from the shadows . . .

Dark and Shallow Lies follows soon-to-be 17 year old Grey returning home to La Cachette, where she attempts to unravel the mystery of what happened to her best friend/twin flame Elora, and the 13 year old mystery of what happened to two of the other Summer Children Ember and Orli. Because as she soon begins to suspect, the murder and tragic loss of those two girls may have something to do with the disappearance of Elora. Grey is also seeing these weird visions, what she thinks is Elora's last moments, but she doesn't know how to control them . . . then there is also the mystery of what else she can do, as she knew her mother had power and was haunted by it . . .

And what a mystery this all was! Why was Elora so mean to Grey last Summer? What was she trying to protect her from, what - who - was she hiding? And what about Case, Elora's boyfriend. Hart, Elora's step-brother, is utterly convinced he had something to do with it, and so is Grey after she finds evidence that points towards him.

I found Case to be an interesting character, and I kept wanting to see more of him in the novel. This is the same for the remainder of the Summer children. While we did have some scenes with them, I wish we got to see them more, and had them more involved in the story. Apart from giving Grey hints and clues, I think they were largely under utilised, which is a shame because the snippets we got of them they had a precious and wonderful friendship (i.e., Mackey and Grey going running together, etc). It just felt disappointing that a lot of the book mentioned the Summer children, the significant of the number, yet we barely got to see any of them & for me those characters & their abilities were compelling.

There was a lot put on the relationships to make this story feel emotional, tense. Specifically with Grey and Elora. We know that they are twin flames. That they think of each other as being their other half. But I didn't feel it. Apart from Grey mentioning how they'd accidentally buy the same dresses, or that they provided comfort to each other, the grief being felt by Grey didn't really come through. Sure, it was sad and you can read on the page that she was grieving, but it wasn't emotive because the chemistry, that bond, wasn't really ever evident on page apart from the reader explicitly being told. This happened with Grey's relationship with Hart, too. Although that was a bit better as we got to see some of their interactions, but ultimately, no. (This also could be because I didn't like Hart much . . . at all). One other example is Hart and Elora. I will not give spoilers on this, but the *reveal* about them was just . . . ugh no thanks I hate it, but also like ???? (view spoiler).

This is the same for the mystery, really. A lot of it came out in the last 5% and I accurately guessed who it was. My jaw did drop at some of the plot twists / reveals - like the truth about Grey's visions!! I honestly did not expect that and I was like OH MY GOD!! That's not what she thought it was, but that!! It was brilliant, and worked so well. Also the other plot twist about one of the other Summer children and the fire, oh it was so tragic and sad, I wanted to cry. And finding out the truth about that, and how that incident festered and turned the town and it's people ugly, was just . . . wow.

So the ending was a hit and miss for me, really. I enjoyed the reveal about Grey's visions, I thought that was good and well done. But as for the rest of it, it just felt very rushed after the first 95% moved slowly. There's a few other things I am mulling over, but ultimately the ending didn't satisfy me as it did not live up to the potential it could've.

3 stars.

(Also I loved Zale. But in the words of Edward Cullen, doesn't he own a shirt?)

Thank you to Netgalley & Farshore/Electric Monkey for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review

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Dark and shallow lies is the definition of an unputdownable novel. I was gripped from the start and it rarely left my hand until I'd devoured the whole thing. Set in La Cachette, a strange, eerie backwater town, Grey has returned home for the summer as she does every year. Only this year, she returns to a very different town, where the childhood friendships she had known and adored have been marred by the loss of Elora, her best friend and twin flame.

Grey is desperate to uncover the truth about what happened the night Elora went missing, but finds herself meeting deadends and secrets at every turn.

The characters are complex and and intense, each of them harbouring a number of skeletons hidden away in various closets. Each of the 'ten', the children all born in a single summer, posses some sort of psychic skill or ability which adds to the dark, magical feel of the book. The swamp, bayou setting almost felt like a character in its own right.

Loads of twists and turns and although I worked out some bits, there were enough plot twists I didn't spot to keep me reading. As a debut novel, this is fantastic and I look forward to seeing what the author writes in the future.

Thank you so much to #netgallegy and #teenpenguin for giving me the opportunity to read this arc in return for an honest review.

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Dark & Shallow Lies, Ginny Myers Sain

Grey’s best-friend Elora is missing, in the mystical bayou full of psychics where Grey spends all her time when she isn’t in school. Here everybody has a “gift” and as Grey tries to uncover the mystery of Elora she realises everybody has something to hide.

This dark, atmospheric YA thriller simmers so hot the steam almost rises off the page. As each page is turned and secrets and gifts are revealed you find yourself dredging a little further into the murky danger of the bayou.
A crackling southern gothic draped in magical lore, this also treads a delicate balance (as all good YA novels must) of being realistic in action, language and emotion whilst still propelling the story onwards. A deeply engaging read.

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I thought this was a thrilling, refreshing take on the YA thriller with a unique supernatural edge. A small town hiding secrets, a tight knit group of friends and a mystery to uncover - a brilliant page turner.

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