A well written story that kept me hooked from the very beginning.
The characters draw you in and keeps you flipping the pages.
The characters were all realistic and very well developed.
I really enjoyed the writing style. I found myself hooked, turning the pages.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

As soon as I started reading this I was sucked into the story. Literally read the whole book in the space of an afternoon. It was one of those books I didn’t want to end but at the same time I desperately needed to know what was going to happen.

Extremely gory and does include SA, so anyone who finds that triggering, you may be best off skipping this one.

”You know what I realised?" Olivia said. "I bet it wasn't even that bitch's birthday”
After everything I read in this book, this line still cracked me up.

TW: sexual assault, gore, abuse

Thank you so much to NetGalley and to C.K. Morris for my arc in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

I am OBSESSED. Oh my god. I loved this.

"The Shadow Family" follows teen Olivia who has lived in the shadow of her botched kidnapping that resulted in the loss of one of her legs. Suddenly she gets an email from a distant relative offering money in exchange for attending a party.

This was such a wild ride and I was SEATED. Once I started it, I couldn't put it down. Olivia is a very engaging main character. She's super sarcastic and witty. I will say that I didn't appreciate how very "not like other girls" Olivia would act at times. I mean, I guess it makes sense, but there were a couple instances in the book when Olivia would bring up Taylor Swift just to shit on her which I found annoying since I thought we were past shitting on Swift for merely existing and being successful, but whatever. Other than that, Olivia was great.

I thought "The Shadow Family" was so creepy and I LOVED the gore. A lot of the sexually explicit stuff in this didn't feel gratuitous or "just because" which I really liked too. Especially once things get explained, it's like an "aha" moment.

I would absolutely recommend this to anyone lookin for a creepy and gory read for summer, or even wait until winter to get the vibes right!

Olivia and her sister, Amy, encountered a kidnapper as small children. As the older sister, Olivia made sure she was taken instead of her sister. Then, once the truck was in motion, she decided to do something very smart — she jumped for freedom. It may have cost her half of a leg, but any reader knows she would have faced much worse if she’d stayed put.

Now, fast forward to her senior year in high school. People have talked about her story ever since, and she feels isolated from her classmates, with the notable exception of her boyfriend.

She receives an email from a long lost relative. After meeting her in pubic, Olivia decides that yes, she will go to her cousin’s birthday party. Especially because her cousin is rich and offers her $25,000 to show up. She also decides to take Keenan (her bf) and Amy with her. They have a perilous journey during a blizzard, but this is nothing compared to what’s still ahead.

This book actually managed to gross me out a bit because it has very vivid, gory descriptions of awful things. Well done, author! I also liked the ending past the first ending. Horror fans who like body horror and gore should love this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC. This review contains my honest, unbiased opinion.

thank you to Netgalley and the author for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review! <3

’”You know what I realised?" Olivia said. "I bet it wasn't even that bitch's birthday”’

The Shadow Family by C. K. Morris is a fantastic splatterpunk debut, with some horrifyingly gory scenes, and genuinely laugh-out-loud humour. Admittedly, I did pick this up purely based on the fact that the central character has the same name as me (go Olivia!), but I am so glad I did, as I had such a great time with it!

We follow Olivia Fitzbelt, a kidnapping survivor, as well as her boyfriend Keenan and sister Amy, as they travel into the mountains of Colorado to meet up with the girls elusive long-lost cousin Eleanor, who tempts them with the promise of 25K to attend her 18th birthday party.

While the premise is simple, the execution was brilliant, with some twists that both disgusted and surprised me in the best way possible. All of the characters were incredibly fun, and very realistic portrayals of teenagers, and I was attached to each of them, which I think is particularly impressive in such a short book (just over 200 pages).

The writing was engaging, and I loved that Morris included mixed-media elements between chapters (such as podcast interviews and newspaper reports), which only added to the overall experience, and never detracted from the tension or flow of the story. I thought the pacing was excellent, and appreciate that the book didn’t overstay its welcome.

I think fans of Nick Cutter (which I am!) would absolutely love this - it felt very reminiscent of his books, The Troop and The Queen.

Overall, The Shadow Family gets 4/5 stars. I can’t wait to see what C. K. writes next!

First things first, there needs to be a great warning about this book. There is sexual assault in this book. I would never have requested this book if I knew this beforehand, and I only found out because it was included in the author’s email when I received the book. Because I had requested it, I decided to read the book anyway, with the knowledge that the assault would occur, and I needed greater warning. I immediately stopped reading. There needs to be some sort of alert in the description of the book even that expresses that there is sexual assault present, as well as the other content warnings that the author shared in their email.

The story had me intrigued for the first 13 or so chapters. But then, my interest started to wane. We know something bad happens, but I almost wish it wasn’t teased so much by jumping to the future with “little did they know” lines. Something else I didn’t exactly love was the writing. There were so many words that I didn’t know the meaning of. I kept having to stop and try to figure out the meaning of words with context clues, and it drove me crazy. It started to feel like the words were just thrown in there to make the book sound smarter, and it instead made me not want to read.

Thank you to the publisher/author and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.