Girl at the Grave started off strong with suspense, mystery, and action, and then fell flat with little happening until well after the 50% mark. The middle was filled with Valentine getting to know her love interest Rowan as four months passed. Their time together was a plus since the instant love factor was nonexistent, but on the other hand, Valentine spent the majority of the novel in love with two guys and went back and forth between them. Her best friend Sam was extremely possessive and jealous when it came to her and he lacked respect for what Valentine really wanted.

The story kept me intrigued, but the reveals weren't satisfying since there was a lack of suspense and mystery. The title has nothing to do with the story and it should have been renamed to something like "Girl in the middle of Blackmail" since it seemed like everyone in this tiny New England town had blackmail on multiple people while dealing with blackmail against themselves. The whole mystery aspect was figuring out who was blackmailing who and why and by the end the whole blackmail factor was a tangled web that made my head hurt. It was still a good read, just not as wonderful as I had hoped for it to be.

Thank you NetGalley for an ARC.

I feel like I have read this story before; it was ok. The writing was good and the plot was fine. I just feel like it's been done before over and over. The girl meets boy, falls in love, other boy is jealous. It was a fine read. I normally like YA but this one fell flat.

Girl at the Grave is a slow read. It starts out extremely slow and involves a lot of information-flooding before the plot actually picks up.

Valentine is a girl whose mother was hanged for murder. When someone tells the rector that Valentine’s mother was actually innocent of the crime, people start disappearing and deaths start strangely occuring. At the heart of this book is a love story. There are two love interests: Sam, the boy next door and best friend, and Rowan, the rich boy whose father was seemingly murdered by Valentine’s mother.

While a lot was (seemingly) happening to Valentine and the people in the town, I found myself not caring about all of the secrets and mysteries surrounding them. The romances seemed immature, and I didn’t find myself rooting for either Sam or Rowan.

The pacing of this book caused me to not enjoy it.

I’m a sucker for a good witch story, mix in Victorian era and to me it’s the perfect book. I loved it. It reeled me in... I have so many books on my TBR but this one kept me going. Suspenseful and full of questions that didn’t go unanswered.

Well this book was a lovely breath of fresh Victorian-era-suspense air! Extremely well-written and believable, this novel tells the story of a young girl named Valentine whose mother was hanged for murder...but years later, it is revealed that her mother may have actually been innocent. Slowly, Valentine learns the true story of what happened on that fatefu night that changed her life. I devoured this novel within two sessions of late night reading and enjoyed every bit of it. The story, the characters- all of it added up to a suspenseful whodunit with an ending that surprised me. Well worth reading this young adult gothic mystery!

In the mid-nineteenth century, Valentine attends a private school where she is ridiculed and scorned by her schoolmates. They say her mother was a witch, they say her mother killed the father of one of her schoolmates. It’s true she was hung for the crime, but as Valentine reaches maturity, she’s told her mother was not guilty, that she killed no one. But if that’s the case, why does Valentine remember seeing her mother pull the trigger? A lively Gothic with a refreshingly intelligent teen heroine

Girl at the Grave started very slow, and I almost put it away as a did not finish novel. I stuck it out and it began to pick up speed. At the heart of the novel is Valentine, whose mother was hanged for murder. Valentine is being courted by Sam, but only has eyes for Rowan. When someone confesses to the rector that Valentine’s mother is innocent, a wave of seemingly unrelated events lead to murder and disappearances. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to be an early reader in exchange for my fair and honest review.