I loved every moment of this. It’s visceral from the get go. Sylvie is a brilliant main character and you feel for her straight away - there’s so much going on in her life. This is so delicious and devious. There’s a massive punch of female rage by the end that I just adored. Total Wicker Man and Men vibes about this. Adored it. Mel Salisbury is a Wonder Woman.

Every time I read a new Melinda Salisbury book, I say it's my new favourite, and Local Gods definitely is. I think this is her best book yet.

Local Gods is a folk horror following Sylvie, the town who decide she has to atone for her father's sins, and the wild woods with their creepy white creatures and their horned god.

This book has everything I love about Melinda's work; a girl who is made to feel like she doesn't belong in her own home, coming into her own power and, in Sylvie's case, finding a decent dose of feminine rage for the people who have treated her appallingly.

I hated almost everyone in this town, but I love how not everyone is the person they seem to be.

Local Gods is packed with a creeping sense of dread and uneasy, knowing something about this place is very wrong but not quite being able to put your finger on what.

I love that Sylvie is a girl who looks for answers in the library.

Her parents made me furious with how useless they are, but I love that we get to see that they are just useless and don't care and there isn't any justification for them behaving the way they do.

I love that Melinda shows what happens when a whole group of people buy into a particular way of thinking and how the kids are roped into it by their parents.

Also, I adored Chantry. She's amazing.

This is an absolutely brilliant read and everyone should definitely have it on pre-order.

I loved this book. Magical realism/folklore and a dash of horror. Sylvie’s father is a charming con man who cons the inhabitants of Pine Ridge Hollow out of most of their savings; hundreds of thousands of dollars, then flees the town. It’s all news to Sylvia until the FBI storm into her perfect home and shatter her perfect life. Initially relieved to leave the town Sylvie and her mother stay with her unwelcoming grandmother until they can stand no more and return to the town.

Sylvie, nearly eighteen and about to leave school after graduating, is deserted by her mother and Sylvie, hated and ostracised by townsfolk for her father’s crimes, is left to survive in the half built neglected station in the strange West Woods. She has a plan. She must graduate as then she will be entitled to a lot of money left by her grandmother, which will enable her to leave the town forever. But events overtake her.

All the animals living in nearby West Wood are white or gradually turning white. The inhabitants of the town are afraid and avoid the woods and the animals, so when a stark white crow lands in front of her, Sylvie knows disaster is imminent. And why are all the pets gradually disappearing? Then she stumbles across a new sort of terror from which she tries to flee. She cannot escape the Illican.

Sylvie is clever, brave and resourceful and the conversations she has with brave, kind and funny Chantry, actually made me smile, breaking the tension. Because as the story progresses the tension certainly is ratcheted up to the point of total horror.

What a great read, written in an easy style that carries the reader along. Maybe a metaphor for looking after our environment and understanding that we are very much a part of nature, not outside or above it. But maybe just a hugely enjoyable read with (ultimately) an explosive satisfying ending.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC for kindle in exchange for my honest review.

I adored everything about this book. The setting was so atmospheric and alive it almost felt like a character in it's own right. I felt so angry on Sylvie's behalf throughout the book, you could feel how isolated and worthless the people in town made her feel.
The whole story lead up to an ending I wasn't expecting but absolutely loved, it was so deliciously satisfying!

“Deliciously sinister, mesmerising YA folk horror at its best” is an absolutely bang on description of this book, and you should read it.

A privileged teenage girl has her life turned upside down by her father’s betrayals, and now she’s come back to town she’s a social pariah. She is betrayed by everyone in her life, until she meets something in the woods. Her investigation about what it is leads her on a dark path.

I read this book entirely in one sitting, I simply could not put it down. The writing is smart, relatable, and at times visceral, perfect for the story and the genre.

Absolutely delectable.

It has been quite a wait for Melinda Salisbury's latest full length novel, and it has absolutely been worth it. LOCAL GODS really feels like a return to the folk horror of HOLD BACK THE TIDE (probably my favourite of her books), with a sharpness of prose and plot that makes this an incisive look at rage, desperation, and fear. This is a great addition to the cannon of small town horror.

This book just drips with atmosphere. Something feels deeply wrong from the very start and this only builds across the book as the history of the town is revealed. Nature is used here to unsettle, taking our post-Industrial ideals of nature as a beautiful, peaceful thing and turning it into something jagged and vicious. Some of these details are subtler - animals being the wrong colour - and some are very overt - herbivores are now carnivores.

Likewise, Sylvie's isolation thanks to her father's crimes (and the town taking it out on her as the only available target) creates a deeply unsettling atmosphere. With no one looking out for her, she is vulnerable and there's no one to help her - so she goes to the woods. And the woods answers.

Small town horror is a staple for a reason, the close knit community closing ranks against an outsider. It creates a deep sense on injustice that puts you squarely on the side of the outsider as well as increasing a sense of dread as you know the authorities will be no help whatsoever. It also means that the relationships that do form are all the more important - and easier to exploit.

Sylvie has three main relationships in the book; local shop owner Zelda, who does her best to care for Sylvie, offering a lifeline; strange girl Chantry who is willing to believe in the supernatural, and thus is a great ally; and Hunter, a former friend who wants to help but isn't willing to overtly stand up to anyone. I liked how these relationships all felt so different from one another. I particularly liked how Hunter implicitly explored the idea of people who don't agree but are too scared to stand up to the crowd and so become complicit.

The ending is brutal and so full of rage. I loved it and the way fire was used. It's such a contrast to the flower and leaves of the rest of the book, which feels dark and cool in the way woods do. The fire feels like a revolt against that tone, an attack but also a cleansing.

As you can probably tell, there are so many ideas touched upon in this book - so many things it asks you to think about.. This was a book well worth the wait.