I'd intended to just read a few chapters last night, a nice finish to my first day of vacation--but from its opening chapter, <i>What We Harvest</i> is both foreboding and captivating, with a delicious, riveting hook: it's getting close to curfew, and when *are* Wren's parents going to come back from that farm?

From there, the book takes off like a shot. Fraistat's pacing is a well-oiled monster; I kept looking up to discover I'd blazed through another fifty pages, slightly disoriented at the numbers on the clock that *couldn't possibly be right*, anxious for Wren, creeped out by the Wendig's Heartland vibes, and unable to put the thing down--and so I didn't. I just read straight through, and when I was done, I felt vindicated and thrilled and hung over and *really* eager for another Ann Fraistat book.

If I have any regrets, it's that I couldn't read this book as a teenager; as an adult, it was un-put-down-a-ble, but between the Goosebumps like horror elements, the swift and easy voice of the narrator, and the clean and beautiful prose, I would've probably worshipped it and wallpapered my room in Farm-Core Aesthetic Vibes.

Wow this is a truly spectacular story. From the very first page I was hooked. The concept of the blight ravaging a small idyllic farming town was captivating. The writing is phenomenal. I felt like I could smell and taste the blight. The pacing of the story is great a little bit of a slower build up but it works perfectly. The atmospheric feeling of dread creeping in gave me goosebumps.

Wren’s character is very relatable. I think often times with survival horror books it’s easy to get caught up in the could’ve would’ve should’ve. But with this story the author built compelling a character that had to make tough decisions and made some mistakes. Her actions were believable and heartbreaking at times. No one knows what it’s like facing down a blight infested horde of friends, family and animals. I thought the inclusion of Wren’s ex Derek was a great addition. Romance wasn’t a main factor of this story but it was a nice bright spot amongst the blight.

I really enjoyed the mystery and truth about the blight. It was creative and dark. I also loved the themes of human greed and how far would people go to better their lives and their families. The ending was satisfying but realistic. Overall I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves creepy survival thrillers. Also if that’s not enough for you. This story has a zombie dog!!! 5/5 a fantastic debut.

Thank you Ann Fraistat, Delacorte Press/Random House Children’s, and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Fast-paced and oh-so-creepy, with a festering secret at its center, What We Harvest is the rural zombie novel I never knew I wanted.

Holy moly! This was incredible. I’m a huge chicken so I was super nervous and scared through the majority of the story. There was so so much suspense it felt like my heart was going to beat of of my chest. I literally couldn’t stop reading as soon as I started the first line of the book. The entire premise of the story is incredible. I loved the characters and the mysteries along the way. Wren is such a brave strong main character. This was one of the best books I’ve read lately. I will be pre ordering a hard copy for myself!!

*thank you so much to netgalley for the arc in exchange for a review*

We're not even in 2022 yet and this is already one of my favourites of the year!

I wasn't the biggest fan of Wilder Girls but this one was so good! It had beautiful writing, great characters and creepy scenes but the plot was so freaking cool.

If you wanted more from Wilder Girls I think you'll really dig this, I went into this with just the knowledge it was compared to Wilder Girls and I was worried I wasn't going to really like this but Ann Fraistat really killed this and wrote a fantastic novel

I'm so happy I was able to review this one early via Random Penguin House and Netgalley.

I won't ever shut up about this book

So, my first read of December was so good. I loved this book! Anyone who knows me knows I love, love a good Lovecraftian tale, and this is it. My favorite Lovecraft story is Color Out of Space, which has inspired so many good books/movies, and What We Harvest hits a lot of the same dread-filled notes of that short story. It's brimming with ominous dread and just the most devastating sort of supernatural, unstoppable doom & gloom, but (unlike Lovecraft) Ann Fraistat can also write good characters. Wren is a compelling, relatable character who makes very real mistakes and painfully hard decisions, but she's just so utterly readable and likable. Her relationship to her parents is heartbreaking, but so well explored (which is something I love to see in YA fiction). Derek, Wren's ex, is an equally compelling character, and their growth in relation to each other throughout the book is so natural and true.

Content-wise, What We Harvest is packed with all my favorite things. There's a beautiful, mysterious town with a generations-old secret that gets darker and darker as the story goes. There's a frightening disease that's overtaking the town and its inhabitants. There are zombie-like monsters who hide in the woods at night and attack anyone outside after dark. The pacing of this book, I feel, is perfect. Some might find it to be too slow of build-up, but to me it made the dread sink in just a little bit heavier--making the situation seem truly dire, if not outright impossible to survive. The climax was admittedly a little confusing (a bit hard to visualize) but the ending more than made up for this bit of rockiness. Just a wonderful sort of bittersweet to close out an excellent book. Loved it!

Five stars for this incredible debut!

Hollow’s End is this idyllic town where, for the founding families, their farms and what they harvest mean more than anything. They are what keep the town prosperous. And they are all very unique. Until the quicksilver blight appeared five months ago and started to poison their crops… and soon the animals and people, creating rotting zombie-like hordes with milky eyes and a taste for flesh.

Wren’s family is indeed one of those founding families and the blight is just starting to attack their crops. But with her parents missing and her famous wheat crops in danger, she turns to the one person she has been trying to avoid: her ex boyfriend Derek (another founder). Together, they try to search for her parents and stumble upon the possible cause of the rot that is taking over everything.

Zombie fiction isn’t unique in itself, but I found this one really unique in the fact that you are getting the perspective from someone who is just getting infected. You get to see a little of the process and the fight that Wren has against it. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone and has to fight to stay herself to protect the people she cares about as well as to try to solve the mystery that is WHY the blight is happening.

A sharp new voice that delivers a wonderfully horrific debut absolutely dripping in atmosphere.

Wren's town is slowly being eaten by the blight: a silvery rot that has taken over the farms of her neighbors and gotten the entire town quarantined. When it hits her farm, and her parents are missing, she has to call her ex-boyfriend in for help, and things only escalate from there.

What We Harvest is easily my favorite YA horror and Ann is going to be an author to watch for years to come. She weaves the horror of the blight, with the generational horror of the things your family was willing to do to get what they wanted and what you have inherited from it. I was in love from the first chapter and read the book in 2 sitting because putting it down was just not an option.

You gotta read it.

Small Favors meets Wilder Girls in this fast-paced thriller about a town with magical properties and the blight slowly killing them all.

I was really excited to read this but it ended up being a disappointment. The summary had me hooked but from the first chapter I knew it was going to be a struggle. Wren didn't make the best decisions which unfortunately produced severe consequences and it became redundant after a while. Some passages I skimmed through to get to the action parts because the slow parts didn't keep my attention. Thank you for giving me the chance to read this, NetGalley.

Engaging characters, good horror component. I enjoyed this book. A little bit slow in the middle but picked back up and the ending was good. Definitely more substantial than a lot of other YA novels I’ve read.

This was such a great read! the mystery of what was happening was well developed - the characters and the tension were intriguing and kept my attention. Overall a really great read!

If you love "Small Favors" and/or "House of Salt and Sorrows" by Erin A. Craig, and even "The Bone Houses" by Emily Lloyd-Jones, this book is for you! This book has very similar vibes and writing in the best way. I really liked the concept of this blight slowly killing these farms and the girl who wants to stop it. The horror descriptions were pretty nasty at times and the author did a really great job pulling you into the story from the first sentence. This was also a good length, never too short or long which is rare for me in YA these days. I admit that the end was a bit rushed and a little too easily resolved but this was still good. A great debut that's perfect for the spooky season!

A very interesting story! It is well paced and keeps you wondering what exactly is going on and how it would end. It has a creepy vibe and is just a little bit gory at times. It is a very quick read and hard to put down.

I don’t want to give anything away, so I will just say that personally I would have preferred a different ending, but that is just my preference.

The book was written well and I think would be one the YA crowd would be really into, but also one adults would enjoy too.

Thanks to Net Galley and Random House Children’s, Delacorte Press for this digital arc in exchange for my honest review which is not affiliated with any brand.

#NetGalley #WhatWeHarvest

⭐⭐⭐

All wrapped up in a neat little bow.

What We Harvest is genuinely creepy. You have small-town secrets, zombie-esque creatures in the woods, and voices coming from seemingly nowhere.

This had imagery that was truly nightmarish and I was so here for it. People are disappearing in Hollow's End and everyone knows why — the Blight. An oozing, silver toxic waste that has dug its claws into all the magical crops that kept the town alive for over 150 years. When we enter the town, it's already quarantined by the government, though no one cares to intervene. Instead, we follow Wren as she tries to unravel the mystery of the Blight and save her parents, her love, and herself, before it's too late.

I am so back and forth about this book. I truly had a good time, let's just say that first. It was fast-paced and well-written. I found myself holding my breath during tense scenes and flying through pages to get to any sort of answers because even though the conception of some of the major plot points seemed a bit absurd, I still *needed* to know.

Honestly, I laughed at points I shouldn't have laughed at just because there ended up being so many elements that just kind of jumbled about and felt a little silly. The ending was — em — probably a bit more mystical than I would have expected for a book that relied on darkness and grit and gore the rest of the time. I didn't dislike it necessarily, it was just a shift in the mood.

Overall this was a super fun read for October and I give my thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for granting me this ARC in exchange for my honest review. If you want something spooky and bloody — definitely pick this little gem up!

What We Harvest is a is a wonderful and incredibly rich fantasy novel, so well built and fast paced that I wasn't able to put it down till I reached the end. I was absolutely captivated by the atmosphere, and the characters.

This novel submerges the reader in a landscape so imaginative and detailed that the information of the world building/plot never feels forced, and is never difficult to understand or picture in one's mind. I had an enjoyable time reading this and it held my attention the entire way through that I finished it within the day! I enjoyed every page and thought that the plot/story was very unique. Would recommend to anyone!

I'm not sure what I was expecting when I picked this one up, but it wasn't this. I wasn't expecting a beautifully lush fantasy with undertones of horror, something creepy enough to make even me scared. I loved this so much, and I wasn't ready to leave the world it created.

My favorite thing about this mightve been the atmosphere. (I say mightve because it's awfully hard to pin down a favorite when the whole book is amazing) It was lush, beautiful, yet delightfully wicked. I knew when I saw the cover this would be gruesome, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so. It was graphic, and I loved it so much because of that. It was the perfect book to escape into, even though it did terrify me at times.

I also really loved our main character, Wren. She wasn't particularly special or talented, she was just determined. This in itself is a beauty I can admire. Things only got better when we learned how far she was willing to go, and how much she would have to lose to achieve her goals. She was a relatable character, and one I wish we could return to.

Although I'm not a huge creepy/horror reader, I really loved this one! It was the perfect mix of gruesome and lyrical, and it'll stick in my mind for quite some time


Thanks to Netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

First of all, thank you to Random House Children’s for the free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love love loved this book! There were so many moments I gasped out loud, cringed in disgust, and felt pain for the characters. I highly recommend this book for anyone who loves horror with a little bit of romance. Perfect October spooky read!

What We Harvest is a debut YA novel by Ann Fraistat, but it’s sure to have a larger audience than that, from the haunting cover alone! An idyllic farm community that is part tourist attraction due to its unusual produce begins to experience a terrible malady known as the blight, which affects not only the crops. Wren takes it upon herself to remedy the problem on her family’s farm with dire consequences, and later asks for help from her neighbor, and ex, Derek, when her parents disappear after curfew. Derek agrees to help, knowing their farms are all the futures they have. The tension in the novel is immediate, and as the story unfolds, it ramps up even more as situations warrant decisions that even the adults have struggled with. There is a natural flow to the story, and much mystery; everyone at Hollow’s End has secrets,ancient, malevolent secrets.