This is a book that was just not for me. I also think this is the book that made me realize that I should just DNF books instead of forcing myself to read things I don’t enjoy. I hate when I dislike a book and writing negative book reviews is not something I like to do. I also would like to preface this review with the fact that I received an early advanced reader’s copy from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review back in August. I put it in the back of my piles in the fall due to the pub date not being until March, and then when I picked it back up in December I just couldn’t get into. So unfortunately, for me, this book was a huge miss.

I love true crime and I love weird scifi/fantasy things so when I read the summary of this book I thought I would love it! But, I have a really hard time with books when I don’t connect with the main character. Willow, our ex-cop addict “hero” could not have been more unlikeable if Sparrow tried. I could not stand him and I wondered if we as readers were supposed to like this guy. It was a little unclear. I can forgive a lot in books if I really connect with a character, but with this book I just couldn’t stand Willow and some of the thoughts that pop into his head. There’s a line in the book where he is staying in his daughter’s attic after his stint it rehab and he says, “He was feeling like Anne Frank up there.” Granted I read an advanced reader copy, so maybe a wise editor cut this out in the final, but that line really bothered me! It wasn’t the first or last instance of some random throw away line that I found offensive. Much earlier in the book the “R” word was used to describe a mentally challenged child, which I really do not like. Later in the book when Willow is talking with one of his friends from rehab he says, “She was a dyke but he’d know many in his time who experienced the phenomenon of SDC—Sudden Dick Craving” WTF!!There are a lot of things about Willow that just really rubbed me the wrong way.

The plot of this novel is interesting but I think the execution makes it flawed. The concept that murdered children get a second-chance at life so they can hunt down their killers and bring them to justice is interesting, but it’s never explained how this works. The characters themselves even talk in circles about how they don’t know how they are supposed to reach their “moment of balance”. The Guides they are given essentially say, “don’t ask questions, just trust” and it makes it feels like that is what the author is asking readers to do too. I was also uncomfortable with the idea that children are in adult bodies and some are still being intimate with partners. That just put a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I decided to finish this novel because once they got into investigating the murder of Maya and Troy Rummer that was interesting to me, and I wanted to see if they would figure it out and bring their killer to justice. But that happened about 40% into the book, so I feel like there was a ton that could have been cut out of this story. When you do find out the killer, he seems to go on this really clique waxing poetic soliloquy, it was almost cartoonish to the point that I had lost my faith in the writing. There was a lot that could have been cut off, even a lot of the stuff with Honeychile. She seems really build up as an important main character and she is for a while, but at the end her character just seemed flat to me.

I really did not enjoy reading this book. I think the concept was interesting, but overall the execution just fell very flat. I wonder if a lot of the things I mentioned had been ironed out in a later draft. I would be interested to hear how other people feel about this one.

*I received a free egalley copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Happy Reads Everyone!

I stopped reading after reaching 20% as I could no longer bear the upsetting subject matter. Many thanks for the book. However, many apologies for not being able to continue reading on.

This is billed as a psychological thriller but I would say it is more of a mystery with fantasy elements. The title, the cover and the quote from David Cronenberg all had me very interested in this book but I found it quite disappointing. The structure and pacing of the book, along with the introduction of several characters in a short space of time, made it confusing and quite difficult to keep up with. The main character, Willow, is very cliched and I thought he was going to be developed into something more interesting but that was not the case. He is homophobic, and objectifies women. I think the ending is supposed to be his redemption but I didn't find that to be the case. Also, there are some racial slurs that I felt were unnecessary and lazy. The references to Stranger Things got a bit excessive. This book had some great ideas but the execution was lacking. After reading this I found out that Sarah Sparrow is a pseudonym and I can only assume that this is a male author rather than female. Either way, I really wanted to like this book but it was disappointing and I did not enjoy it.

You are either going to love or hate this book.

The first half of the book is focused on setting up the premise; children who were murdered can possess the bodies of recently deceased adults, and exact vengeance on their murderer. They do this with the help of a Porter; a still living adult who can guide them through the process and provide moral support in a AA-type setting. Psychic alcoholic and disgraced cop Willow Millard Wylde (yes you read that right) digs up a cold case that he couldn’t forget, unbeknownst to him that the victims have returned to solve their own cases.

Some readers will be frustrated by the slow build. Sparrow takes her sweet gentle time getting to the point, and if you find her prose charming, in the first half at least it’s a fun, if macabre ride through Wylde’s scumbag past and that of the world of ghosts he refuses to want to understand. And if you don’t like it but hang on anyway, the premise is so original that half the tension comes from the fact that you haven’t read anything like this before, and you don’t know where it is going. I honestly really did enjoy the writing style in the first half, but Sparrow clearly struggles with resolution in the second half.

Unfortunately, while the premise is brilliant and new, many individual elements feel far more cliche. The villain has a unnecessarily long and utterly boring maniacal monologue, that, despite him crooning over a character I genuinely like who was at his mercy, I felt myself wishing he’d just shut up and murder the poor guy already. There are tired stereotypes about the mentally disabled that are as boring as they are offensive. The list of character names, like Willow Millard Wylde, Adelaide, Pace, etc sounds like a list of baby names compiled by a soon-to-be parent deadset on finding the most unique names possible and passed off to a panicking partner who helpfully suggests “Annie” and “Daniel” to balance things out. The way the women are written makes me somewhat suspicious that this is yet another case of a male author assuming a female name in the hopes of getting attention in the wake of Gone Girl. No one knows who Sarah Sparrow is yet, but I couldn’t help but wonder when Willow got a hot girlfriend decades younger named Dixie Rose.

A Guide For Murdered Children has a fantastic premise from an author who has real talent. The problem is Sparrow needs an editor who is willing to take a machete to whole sections of work and pluck the good parts out of the long, regurgitated mess that is the second half.

This book had a lot of promise. The entire premise about murdered children seeking revenge on those who had ended their lives was interesting enough for me to decide to pick it up. However, the entire novel was disjointed. It was as if the author kept having separate thoughts and decided to vomit them on each page. It was very confusing, and it was very difficult to nail down a definite plot. The beginning was especially all over the place, but it didn't particularly improve as it went on. It was a struggle to finish it, but I did achieve it. Overall, I think it could have been better.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin/Blue Rider Press for the ARC of this novel in exchange for a honest review.

When I read the NetGalley synopsis this book was very intriguing: murdered children coming back as deceased adults to exact revenge on their murderers. Very original! Unfortunately, that original plot is the only reason this book earned a star.

The book is REALLY confusing. Honestly, I had to reread a lot of pages in order to figure it out. And I’ll give it to the book that it was formatted since it’s an I corrected proof but wonky page formatting doesn’t cause a book to be confusing on its own. There were some parts that were so confusing I just stopped reading and moved on. There were a lot of parts of the book that could be written a little more straightforward and still maintained the integrity of the book.

Second, some of the child death scenes are really graphic. I am not normally offended by sex or murder and I regularly read books with heavy themes but some of the graphicness was not necessary and seemed more gratuitous than actually contributing to the plot.

Lastly, the author had a strange writing quirk that really bugged me. Any time she mentioned a new city or suburb she gave you a point of reference to the most well known city but considering this all took place in relatively the same area it wasn’t necessary after the 3rd or 4th new city. Also, I live in the area that this book tales place and some of the information was incorrect but I’ll let her pass on that one since 99% of readers are not going to notice that one.

I really wanted to like this one but I just couldn’t.

Fabulous book. Thoroughly loved. Highly recommend!

Not my cup of tea I’m afraid didn’t like the way it was written, it never seemed to get going I tried to read all of it but I’m afraid I had to give up.

Hello Fellow Readers,

First off if you are triggered by mentions of rape, child abuse and such DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. With that out of the way, I wanted to like this book so bad! The synopsis really reeled me in, along with the title and great cover. I was impressed with the fact that this is a debut novel for Sarah Sparrow. However, the book did not live up to my expectations.

Willow Wylde, the main character, is your stereotypical cop. He drinks hard, is a bad father and has mental fantasies of raping his neighbor. Not the type of person I want to really connect within a book. Sparrow's writing at times felt disjointed and I had to reread sentences multiple times to make sure that I read it right. The writing combined with the confusion of characters speech and actions made this an incredibly hard book to read. I had to read the book in one day because I knew if I put it down I probably wouldn't have picked it back up again.

I was so disappointed with this book.

Well, this ARC request was clearly a mistake. The synopsis sounded interesting to me, but I couldn't read more than 2% because of the writing. Clearly not the sort I like.

The structure, organization, and pacing of this book were dreadful. The first 25% read like nonsense, and the details, once the story finally began, were muddy and infirm.

"A Guide for Murdered Children" has all the ingredients needed for an amazing book - a unique concept, an inventive hook, troubled characters, and some phenomenal and edgy writing. Unfortunately just tossing all the ingredients into a big pan and hoping it comes out in the end doesn't always work.

What this book is missing is a solid through-line. There's no plot. Nothing that drives the story forward. Instead we have half a dozen subplots and tacked together character lines that never coalesce into something stronger.

I really wanted to love this book. Sparrow certainly has some chops and there were some great moments in this, but overall it just didn't deliver an experience and felt as if it were three drafts short of a final product. Worth checking out, if nothing more than for Sparrow's unique style. Hopefully others will enjoy what just didn't work for me.

"Every monster dreams. Every monster imagines, aspires."

* I received a free copy of this book through NetGalley. My thanks to the author and publisher.

I tried several times to get into this book but I couldn't make it past 10%. I always feel terrible not finishing ARCs because I want to be able to give an honest review. Unfortunately this title was just not for me.

I wanted to like this book, but I just could not get into it and I tried many times. IThey synopsis of the book had me excited to read this book. It was just too much being presented and at times it was not clear. It just did not work for me. Thanks to NetGalley, the publsiher and the author for the ARC of this book in return for my honest reivew.

I have GENUINELY tried to get into this book. When given an ARC I always try my best to finish it in order to provide an honest review in exchange but I just couldn't get through this. I don't know what it was, but I had such a hard time sitting down and reading this. I had to DNF it at 15%

I tried really hard to get into this book because I've heard good reviews. It just wasn't my cup of tea, but I am sure there are many who will love it. Sorry.

I requested this book solely based on the title. How can anyone who loves mysteries and weird, supernatural stories resist a title like A Guide for Murdered Children?

We immediately get a thorough, no holds barred view of Willow, and he is a mess. Initially, I wondered who the heck is this person and what is going on? Didn't really seem like he'd be "hero" material, but apparently he was. I rather liked how flawed Willow's character was - it makes him a great person to for his job(s).

The story has a great appeal - what if children who were violently murdered could return to enact revenge? It enables the "landlord" (or the person who helps the child) to live awhile longer, and allows the "tenant" child retribution. An interesting concept.

My only complaint is they keeping talking about "haywire." Oh, it's time for "haywire." Let's chalk it up to "haywire." "Haywire,""haywire," "haywire." I should've counted how many times they used that word. AHHH!

Otherwise, it was a quite enjoyable read.

I wasn’t in the right mood for this book when I started it, so returned about 3 months later and boyyyyyyy am I glad I gave it another shot! One of the most original, haunting and heartwarming books I’ve read this year.

The link to the review will be added upon completing and polishing the review.

I just could not get into this book. It didn't seem to flow. I wasn't really sure what was going on so gave up. Shame as it sounded good.