Smoke and Key
By Kelsey Sutton


If your looking for a good read that has darkness then this book is right for you.

This book literally takes place in the dark. Underground to be exact. In this small town 15 years prior something strange took place and the dead are finding themselves awakened in the underground.

With no memories, they take on names by what item were placed in their caskets. When the last person falls into the underground domain she finds a key in her possession and takes on the name “key”. But is that just her name or does that key mean something more?

Ribbon befriends her and takes her under her wing and begins teaching her about the underworld and the people there. When Key meets the others, two boys stand out to her, Smoke and Journal. Barely there and strange things begin to happen.

Can Key trust anyone? Can she make sense of the memories she’s been seeing after touching Smoke and Journal? Why are residents being murdered, and is she next?

The plot will keep you hooked from beginning to the end. The strange characters will intrigue you. This Mystery will keep you in suspense and the ending may surprise you!

This book is great for young adults and adults too.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

#SmokeandKey
#NetGalley

2 STARS

TW: body horror/gore, suicide mentions, implied abuse, sex scene, death

If I had to describe this book in one word, I think I'd choose "underwhelming" before I went for anything else. I went in hoping to scratch the mystery itch I've had, and this just didn't do it for me. 

I think the biggest problem was that I wasn't engaged. Key, the main character, spends so much time in her memories, unable to control the situation, forced to watch it play out, and when she isn't steeped in memory, she's being herded around Under, where the unusual dead reawaken after tumbling down from their graves, not quite alive but not quite dead. She's the only one who can remember pieces of her life at first, and while the concept was interesting the first time it happened to her, by the end of the book, I was tired of the flashbacks and wanted her to take action and put the pieces together.

Another problem for me was the romance. It was bland, and even though it tried to set itself up as a love triangle, it kind of failed in that, and the only thing worse than a love triangle for me is a love triangle that doesn't even really keep up a triangle shape. The romance was flimsy, and it also focused mostly on connections made in the flashbacks. I would have been a hundred times more interested if there had been more forging of new relationships in the Under, if the romantic partners had found themselves growing closer and closer without memory to stitch them back together, but like Key and most of her characterization, it all depended far too much on what happened before Under.

Troubling too was the final confrontation, which was lacking in the tension I expected, as well as a sound explanation. The ending was almost flimsy in some ways, dull in a way that made me wish I'd put the book down sooner and moved on to something else. I finished it disappointed, which is never fun.

That said, I will admit that the concept was excellent, and so was the fact that this was a standalone (at least, I think it is; what else is there to do?). The dead tumbling from their graves, renaming themselves after whatever came with them, minds empty of their lives? The dead, building a new society from nothing, living half lives in the dark and searching for ways to feel halfway whole again? It was a great concept, one I wish had been explored more fully! But the execution fell far short in the end, too many characters left flat, too many potential threads left unexplored. It could have been great, but didn't live up to the expectation the summary set. 

Still, if you're looking for a quick read with romance and murder rolled into one, and if you want to see the world of Under for yourself, Smoke and Key is set to release on April 2nd this year. Now's as good a time as any to get your pre-orders or library requests in, and if you decide to get it, I hope you enjoy it more than I did.

[This review will be posted publicly on The Words Gremlin at approximately 10am EST on 4/1/19.]