This was a really fun (and trippy) ride. Sadie and Logan forgo their school's fieldtrip to explore Brown County (a super rural area) and they end up at a corn maze that is fully grown even though it is out of season. Then they find a *dead body* that they assume at first is just a mannequin or a prop. But, then they realize the dead body is actually the body of one of the two exploring teens! (All of this happens in the first and second chapters, by the way). This was super trippy and timey-wimey and fast paced. After their discovery, the maze gets even wilder with doors appearing and new turns and crazy events. I read this so, so quickly and yearned for more even after it was done. I am so excited for my library to get physical copies of this--I just know our teens will absolutely eat this up, and I am always super excited to introduce great YA horror to the collection!
I thought that the audiobook was a great way to listen to this story. I feel like it really frees up an extra bit of your imagination to really visualize what is going on. I loved it! I can't wait to hear it with the finalized narrator--I will definitely be requesting this for my library!

Wow.

You look at this cover. You see two people peering through a corn field. You think you can expect Autumnal vibes, maybe. Maybe a romance. You read this book. You complete this book. This was not the book that you'd expect.

Meet Sadie and Logan, high school seniors, filled with the wanderlust of youth. They see a corn maze. Then everything starts to go sideways.

They wander through the corn maze and you can smell the fields. You can feel the warmth of the sun. You can hear the corn rustling in the breeze. Right off the bat, the writing is a completely visceral experience, unspooling immediately into a chaotic sense of anxiety. This felt cinematic to me - the gradual reveal that they're walking in circles. The clever drops of buttons to find their way out like Ariadne. And then boom: we're hit with corpses of their bodies.

The first half of this book was frantic and made me feel crazy. I had no idea what was happening and it made me feel all the more ready to find out.

The second half of this book was a gut punch. This was not the book that you'd expect. This was a deeply thought out metaphor for trauma and was so delicately and accurately written it could have only been produced by an author that knew what trauma felt like.

I don't want to spoil with too many details, but the amount of details and thought that went into this was shocking. We read about trauma, but we also read about how we can become trapped in trauma spirals. We read about how trauma can stay with us, cause us to hurt other people. We also read about how we have to work on healing ourselves so we don't become part of the cyclic patterns, too.

This book meant a ton to me.

Thank you to Harper Audio & Clarion Books via NetGalley for this one.