First of all I love that cover. I love it. It's what drew me to it to begin with. But then the story. It broke me. It's about loss and tragedy and family and the aftermath. This isn't so much a supernatural story as a family drama. It left me feeling broken but it was such an amazing story I can't help recommending it to my friends

This was a really hard book to read. To put myself into the shoes of someone who is grieving so deeply, it hurt. I think that this story was really beautifully written. Unique and utterly heartbreaking. Once I started reading it was hard to put down.

The ending felt a bit rushed, however, and I felt that there could have been a bit more of a story given to the Hallas family. It felt like it could have been a much bigger thing than it was, giving a fantastical element to an otherwise very realistic story.

I received this ARC courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.

I actually finished this book quite a while ago, but delayed writing the review because I didn't know quite how to describe the book without a) spoiling it or b) sounding too much like I'm just gushing about it and not writing a serious review.

I absolutely loved Resurrection Girls. It was an amazing read. The main characters were all three-dimensional, and experienced growth throughout the series. The one thing I didn't like? The ending. I hated the ending. I felt that the way Kara's life turned out was terrible and not in line with her character. But I loved the rest of the book so much I would still recommend it, that's how much I loved the book.

I really loved how it explored two different dimensions of death--one, a girl obsessed with getting close to it for its own sake, and two, a girl affected by it because of the way it tore her family apart. Death was a character in and of itself in this book, but it wasn't in a cliched way, which I really appreciated.

Olivia Foster is stuck in the past, because of her younger brother's death that happened years ago, which ripped her family apart and left her mother and father both in different states of denial and helplessness.

Kara Hallas moves in, and suddenly Olivia is forced out of her routine. She's talking to the boy she used to like, before all the bad things happened to her. She's writing letters to serial killers with Kara. She's taking risks, and finally maybe starting to feel alive.

There's an underlying love story, but it doesn't take over the book. And it's not all heterosexual romance, either, which I appreciated. I'd argue the heterosexual romance is not the main romance, actually, it's Kara and Olivia's relationship.

Honestly, just read the book, it's one of the best horror/magical realism books I've read.

Resurrection Girls is a book about how grief can destroy a family and how sometimes you need someone inappropriate to shake up your world so you can start to move on. Olivia Foster's toddler brother died in the family pool years ago and her mother, father and herself deal with his loss in different ways but mainly by separating themselves from one another. On day three generations of women move into the neighbourhood and the daughter Kara infiltrates the fog around Olivia and offers her a safety line to get out.....by writing to prisoners on death row....

This novel was not what I was expecting as I had expected more of a supernatural story whereas this was more of a therapy book for the main character. I understand the point of Prescott's character but I couldn't connect to him and some parts of the book was slow. Overall I give this book three stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Albert Whitman & Company for an advanced electronic readers copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Resurrection Girls
By: Ava Morgyn
4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Synopsis:

Olivia Foster hasn't felt alive since her little brother drowned in the backyard pool three years ago. Then Kara Hallas moves in across the street with her mother and grandmother, and Olivia is immediately drawn to these three generations of women. Kara is particularly intoxicating, so much so that Olivia not only comes to accept Kara's morbid habit of writing to men on death row, she helps her do it. They sign their letters as the Resurrection Girls.

But as Kara's friendship pulls Olivia out of the dark fog she's been living in, Olivia realizes that a different kind of darkness taints the otherwise lively Hallas women—an impulse that is strange, magical, and possibly deadly.


My Thoughts:

This arc was given to me by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review....
This book is definately not what your thinking it is based on the cover... Trigger warning.
This books delves into loss and the grief that follows and the effects that grief can have on anybody. This novel explores one take, denial. I know with events in my own life lately i have witnessed for myself the crash anf fall of a person after the loss of a loved one.
The author definately had her personal touch and you could feel that in the writing especially when I cried so hard i felt like Robby was real and felt so badly for Olivia and her family. It shows the understanding of a friend thought to be lost... Truly a beautiful but sad and haunting story mixed with a little magical realism when we meet Kara who begins helping olivia move past the things with her family and her brother and live life. But is Olivia in for more than she bargains for?!
This title is out October 1, 2019 be sure to check it out you wont regret it for sure!! A beautiful story...

This book was definitely different from books I've read before and I was intrigued from the beginning. A family suffers a tragedy and stops living, consumed by their grief. That alone was enough to make me curious, but then a mysterious family made up only of women moves in across the street and I was hooked. There were a lot of questions and strange things going on in the book. Why are there no men in Kara's family? Why does Kara feel compelled to write to men on death row? I also enjoyed seeing Olivia break out of her grief and remember what it's like to live again. I feel like the real point of the book was how to move past something terrible and keep going.
There could have been much more in the supernatural side of things and I was kind of disappointed when we got a bare bones explanation and that's it. Still a fun read!

This book was the most heartbreaking read of 2019 for me. The author encompassed tragedy and grief in this story so well that you can't help but feel like you've lost a little brother too. It was so evident for me very early on that the author knows grief and tragedy too well; halfway through the book I went to the author profile page and saw ForLoveofEvelyn.com, my heart broke even more. I want to say this was a beautiful story, Ava Morgyn; you translated Evelyn's legacy and light, and created something beautiful.

Now onto the review!

This story is about the Foster family living as ghosts. Not literal ghosts, but like shells of people. Olivia Foster, at thirteen years old, finds her little brother dead, drowned in their backyard pool. Since then, nearly three years later, her family still has not properly grieved the loss. Her mother is a drug addict, her father is a workaholic who's never home, and Olivia--Olivia buries herself in studies and solitude.

"I suppose this is what they mean when they say, "Life goes on." But it's no kind of life. And my parents and I hardly qualify as living. Something presses forward. Some motor that won't stop running. Like automatons, we marched through an endless of parade of days. We drank coffee and got the mail. We went to your respective cells: the office, the boardroom, the school bus. We kept breathing and talking and eating and beating. But we stopped living the day Robby died. That's the secret no one knows. no one outside of this house anyway. We all died that day, in the pool, in the yard. We were buried, and filled in, and covered up, and forgotten. We were lost. And we've been dead ever since."

This was the Foster family. Until the Hallasses moved in across the road, and you meet Kara. Kara Hallas is very much the opposite of Olivia: where Olivia is empty, Kara is full. Where Olivia grieves and tries to bury death, Kara is obsessed with it. Kara has a knack for writing to serial killers and befriending them, like sort of a pen-pal situation... but with death row or lifers convicts.

"I am death's daughter. She was murder's daughter."

This story, at the end of the day, is about how the Hallasses pull Olivia out grief's shell. Out of death's hands. If you've been through a tragedy such as Olivia has, I think you'll really identify with her. She talks about the ways neighborhoods interact with those who have had the unthinkable happen to them. She talks about ways it leaves your soul empty.

There is a touch of supernatural in the story. It's more or less alluded to, it's not front row. I liked the little touch, it gave the book a mysterious, haunting vibe. I still have a lot of questions when it comes to the supernatural aspect of it, and I can't tell if the author did this on purpose or not. Maybe it's all part of the mystery, but I still wish she'd given just a little bit more information on the curse, because I don't really understand it.

Overall I would 100% recommend this story. It's dark, it's a little creepy, it's tragic, but there is also such bright lights in the story that it's not totally depressing (if that makes sense?). I loved the contrast of Kara's fullness to Olivia's emptiness. I love watching Olivia come to terms with her brother's death. I can tell the author poured a lot of herself in this book, and I think it turned out beautiful.

I give it 4.25 stars, because I'm dumb and can't make up a mind for a rating. As I've mentioned, I think the supernatural aspect of it really needed to be addressed a little bit more. I feel disappointed that I don't understand Sybil's role in the story, but with how much she was mentioned I feel she had a big part in the events that I'm just not seeing? It's those details that kind of leave me frustrated.

Nonetheless, pick up this book and read it; even if it's just for the beautiful writing :)

"Nothing could take Robby from us. Not a pool. Not a fire. Not a man made of shadows bearing the kiss of death. My brother's body, his duck hair and pudgy arms, his gummy smile and baby-boy smell--those were gone. And they would be missed and longed for every day that we drew breath. But the essence of Robby--his gentle ways, his joy, his truth--would always be ours. he would remain three years bright as dawn, starlit and flawless, a golden promise that finally came and went in perfect tempo."

Olivia and her family are still reeling from the accidental death of her younger brother, Robby, three years before the story takes place. The surviving members of the family are barely floating along, not even bothering to live some semblance of a normal life, when new neighbors move into a house that has its own tragic past. Olivia is quickly sucked into the lives of the grandmother, mother and daughter now residing there, taking their quirks in stride.
Kara, close to the same age as Olivia, almost immediately becomes entwined with her daily life. The two engage in some arguably questionable activities. Most notably, Kara is obsessed with writing to ne'er do wells on death row. Olivia's friend from before Robby's accident, Prescott, is understandably alarmed when he learns of this hobby, but it doesn't dissuade him from continuing to spend time with either of the girls.
This book was a stunning blend of dealing with grief and magical realism. Her descriptions of loss are sharply accurate, and she expertly describes the sense of guilt that so often comes after. The reactions, especially from Olivia's parents, felt gut wrenchingly real and often left me with tear filled eyes. Even at their worst behavior, there was an underlying humanity that made their actions, reprehensible as they sometimes were, understandable. My only qualm with this book was the super fast charged ending, which felt too abrupt. Even another chapter or two would have made this a conclusion more worthy of what this beautifully written book deserved.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance reading copy. This did not influence my review.

A heartbreaking exploration of grief, it's effect on the ones left behind, with a little bit of magical realism thrown in - Resurrection Girls follows Olivia, a young girl deeply depressed after the death of her little brother. When a mysterious family moves into the house across the road, Olivia begins to emerge from the pall over her house and realize that there is still a life worth living despite her tragic history. A quirky and poignant tale, this story packs an emotional punch. Anyone who has been depressed and/or lost a loved one can empathize with the stagnant life Olivia's family has been left living. The story gets a little muddled towards the latter half and the ending is quite abrupt, but I still enjoyed the novel and the overarching message it tried to teach its readers.

A special thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a free advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

What a weird, poignant tale! Sometimes the novel doesn’t seem to know if it’s a story about the supernatural or a story about the reality of grief. I get that it can be both, but I don’t think that they necessarily went hand in hand together as smoothly as I feel like it could have this time. Ava Morgyn hits with some real zingers throughout the novel, and she’s definitely a talented writer in how she talks about emotions, particularly grief. That being said, the pacing was a bit slow in spots, and I don’t think the end represented the rest of the novel well because it seemed so out of left field it was just impossible to believe. Also, the Prescott stuff did nothing for me. Overall, though, I enjoyed this book and find it very striking in how it deals with grief!

To be frank, this book was very bizarre. I can honestly say I had no idea in what direction the book was going. It was very depressing, lots of substance abuse and the ending was bizarre. Not clear at all.

This was such a beautiful, heartfelt exploration of family and grief. I was so immersed in the world of the story and it definitely made me feel so many emotions! I really loved the magical realism aspects especially. And the cover is so beautiful.

I really liked this! The way the author writes about grief is familiar and harrowing, especially in regards to our main characters mother. There’s a lot to unpack in this story but I enjoyed what I read. I’m looking forward to more books from this author!

I was instantly intrigued by this book's description and by the author's promise of magical realism, and what I got did not disappoint.

I'd like to say that this book is first and foremost about loss. It was incredibly hard to read at times, and if you're prone to crying, this one is definitely a tear-jerker. The author herself has experienced the loss of a child, just like the characters in her novel. The result was an incredibly raw and sincere voice, one that knew grief and tragedy from many angles. It was heartbreaking to read, and the emotions Olivia felt were vividly tangible. I am always wary of death in books--sometimes characters' reactions to it can be unrealistically dramatic or underwhelming. Morgyn got it just right, letting rays of hope and healing start to shine through. Her prose was refreshingly unique, unlike most YA narration these days. There were clever turns of phrases and unexpected analogies. It was genuinely enjoyable to read, and especially impressive considering that this is Morgyn's debut novel. 

The characters felt dynamic and rich, like real people I could actually talk to. They were well-developed, and their relationships with one another felt organic. They all had traits that stood out, but they didn't completely define them. They were multi-dimensional with lots of morally gray decisions. My favorite was Kara, the unusual girl who moved in across the street. She was charismatic and manipulative, confident and effortless. I was really drawn to her, which made the actions of Olivia all the more relatable.

I agree with some others who have said that the plot needed a little work. I think the idea of writing letters to prison inmates is what drew me in, but this subplot fell a little short, in my opinion. Additionally, the ending left me slightly unsatisfied, as it went in somewhat of a strange direction. I enjoyed individual scenes, but I do think they could have been strung together in a different way. 

I'd characterize this book as a little bit magical realism and a little bit supernatural, but honestly, not too much of either. There are dashes of contemporary romance and other YA fiction. It doesn't completely have the same qualities as other books in these genres, so I'm content to leave it in one all its own. It's gritty, and haunting, and a little spooky.

I really liked this book. I've been reading a lot of duds lately and this one wasn't a dud. It was interesting and sad, the story about Olivia and her parents being so numb from the death of her little brother. The arrival of the family across the street wakes Olivia up and reunites her with her old friend as well as a new one. I got a bit lost on the ending but overall it was a good story of overcoming grief and moving on.

Resurrection Girls, by Ava Morgan
Posted: August 12, 2019 in Young Adult Reviews
Tags: Albert Whitman, Ava Morgan, aw teen, book review, books, resurrection Girls, reviews, young adult books 0
Resurrection Girls…what do I say about this book?? First off, I went into reading it largely blind. The summary fit my interests of grief/trauma/etc, so I gave it a go. I just wasn’t expecting magical realism, so when that appeared with a wallop in the last quarter of the book, it left me uncertain how I felt overall.

Resurrection Girls centers around Olivia Foster, a teenage girl who found her toddler brother dead in their backyard pool three years prior to the beginning of the book. Olivia and her family are frozen in the grief of losing her brother, until the Hallas family moves in across the street and literally changes everything. Ava Morgan has crafted Olivia and her family as an amazing portrait of grief. You don’t just “get over” losing someone. It doesn’t work that way. Olivia is in denial, her mother is lost in a drugged haze, and her father has created a secret shrine to his lost son in a storage locker. Each family member is isolated in how they manage their grief and convinced they are the only ones who mourn; none of them see they could heal stronger and faster together. Olivia’s mothers drug use in the dark corners of their family home is especially well crafted, as are the unspoken undercurrents of blame running through the household. Reading about Olivia’s father alone in the storage locker also struck a cord with me–as someone who has lost somebody, I understand that need to keep as much of them as close to you as you can.

It is hard to discuss this book without spoilers, (especially the part I decidedly did not like) and I find myself struggling to write this review!! Olivia’s relationship with Kara starts out odd but normal. They bond over writing to inmates who are on death row for any number of atrocious crimes. Olivia is uncertain why Kara is obsessed with death, but writing the letters with her under the moniker “Resurrection Girls” slowly helps her get a handle on her own emotions about the loss of her brother. Kara exists to bring the light back into Olivia’s life as she begins to move on from her devastating loss, and the character does her job well. Looking back, perhaps pieces of the ending should have been more obvious to me than they were? But watching Olivia grow through her relationship with Kira felt like I was let in on something special.

Honestly, I didn’t dislike this book. Magical realism, however, is not a genre I’m generally going to seek out. Morgan had me solidly invested in the characters until the last quarter of the book when the rug got yanked out from under me by a very strange event I didn’t quite buy in conjunction with the rest of the story, and she never quite reeled me back in. The metaphor of the ending just didn’t entirely work for me. As a result, I’ll give this one three stars for highly believable and well written characters with a two star dock for the unusual abrupt turn of an ending. If you like magical realism though, you may rate this more highly!

**I received Resurrection Girls as an ARC from Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review. Resurrection Girls is scheduled for publication October 1st, 2019, by AW Teen.

Not my usual genre but that cover and title hooked me and i simply had to read it.

“When we hold on to dead, we lose pieces of ourselves.”

I loved it....and yes i would recommend. Can't wait to have a physical copy in my hands.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review*

Resurrection girls is an interesting read, not what I expected but loved it all the same. I do wish they explained the “curse” a little more but overall it was an incredible book to read.

I did not enjoy this book at all, it was very dark and just not my cup of tea at all, I struggled through the first few chapters and just didn’t find it any better

This debut hit almost all of the right notes for me.
It’s a novel about child death and the grief that engulfs not just the parents of the child, but the sibling(s) as well. It’s about learning to let go and to not let go, finding your new balance after losing an essential part of your heart and your family.

First of all, this book hit home for me. I lost my older sister in an accident when I was 9. Five years later, I lost my dad to another accident. So, I understand how crazy and strange and totally upsetting the grief process is. And this book got it right. Grief isn’t something you EVER escape, when you lose someone you loved deeply, that loss is always with you. Yes, you learn a new way of living, but that old innocently happy life you once had is gone, never to be again. I thank God that my parents didn’t act like the ones in this book, lost to their own grief and blind to everyone else’s.

I learned that the author lost a child in the process of writing this book. I know that that’s why the writing in this book is so clear and honest. She made a beautiful piece of art from the feelings left by a horrible tragedy that no one should ever have to go through. Unfortunately, it happens every day.

The only bad thing I can say about this book is that I felt the plot strayed a little in the end. I thought the girls would have more to do with the letter writing they had started, but overall I was satisfied with both the character development and how the story wrapped up.

This was a solid, 4-4.5 stars! I highly recommend this to anyone out there still struggling on the grief staircase.