Our Crooked Hearts

This is a dark book, but I found it really interesting. I liked the themes of witches and black magic.
The story draws you in from the first chapter, and makes you forget that there is a world outside the book.

I absolutely loved this book and read the entire thing in under 24 hours - with a break to actually sleep. I thought the pacing was excellent and really enjoyed the flipping between current day events and events from the mothers teenage years which occurred until near the end when the previous and current timelines joined up. I love books with magic in them but what actually really struck me about Our Crooked Hearts was the relationship between Ivy and her mother and how it showed the humanity and failure of her as a mother as well as the love. I also thought the villain of the piece was really well portrayed, arguably there's more than one villain depending on how you choose to look at it - that shade of grey in regards to the age old good v evil trope works perfectly.

This is a haunting, dark, and utterly brilliant book about witches and black magic. I was completely absorbed in the story from the very beginning. The duel timeline / view points really add to the wonders and horror throughout the book.

A fine tale of witches, secrets and revenge. Lovely stuff.

Life starts to go wrong for seventeen-year-old Ivy when she and her boyfriend almost run down a naked woman. When dead rabbits start to appear on her doorstep she knows something is happening. Then her mother disappears, and things really start to unravel.

And so we launch into a fast-moving and shock-laden story of family, witchcraft, secrets and revenge. A heady mix for so-called Young Adult fiction. It's a term I really dislike. Many of the best books I, (62 year old male), have read recently have been designated YA. Why? A good story is a good story.

Now for my ongoing gripe. This book happens in two time periods = the present, and some twenty years ago, when Ivy's mother Dana and her friends discover the power than witchcraft offers. So many books now seem to favour the dual timeline format, and I suppose I need to accept this is a necessary tool authors use to slowly reveal elements which will finally dovetail into the story's climax. But I'll never be a fan.

In this case the past story reveals how Dana and her friends discover a book of witchcraft which allows them to cast increasingly complex spells, culminating in a summoning spell that goes wrong. It's the result of this spell that cascades down the years to fall on Ivy and her friends.

I really liked this book. It moves along at a pace, and the characters are well fleshed out, and it's easy to feel Ivy's frustration as she learns more about her mother's past, as well as her own. The story takes a few surprise twists, as we're slowly drawn into the deeper story. As Ivy begins to fight back, thing really start to move and I really did want to keep reading just one more chapter.

I was lucky enough to score a Netgalley ARC, but I'll be eagerly waiting to read the book again when it's published. Definitely recommended for fan of VA Schwab, Ben Aaronvitch and Naomi Novik.