Disclaimer: I received this book for free through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I can't seem to find a decent Young Adult horror novel. They tend to forget the goal is to scare people and they veer off into a contemporary love story. It describes some gross bone stuff. The author focused so much on building an atmosphere that the plot died along the way.

First things first, this is the first book I've ever read that deals with like bone magic which I found fantastic and I want to just consume all books with bone magic now. The woods and magic were awesome in this book and I was surprised to see the devil character in here but he was different than most things I've read with the devil in him, so I appreciated a new take on him and I loved that this brings him back to his powerful scary self. Now, something I struggled with was the characters. I thought the group dynamic was good but knowing that they were college age I was expecting more adult behaviors but they were still very young high school. It got kind of distracting for me. And then the big showdown was awesome and then the next chapter was set like in the future and I thought for sure I was missing some pages or something. But I do still love this cover!

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have really been enjoying the amount of creepy, technically horror but not quite horror, books I have been reading lately. A Dowry of Blood, What Moves the Dead, and now Wake the Bones—it’s enough to bring joy to my little gothic heart! Unfortunately, Wake the Bones, while good, didn’t quite live up to its full potential.
Speaking first to what I liked. I loved the imagery in this book. The visceral, but beautiful way things are described had me absolutely enraptured in the same way that horror classics like Frankenstein and Dracula do. As someone who has studied both classic and popular literature, I am always keen when a modern author harkens back to the poetic and descriptive language of days gone; while also not going overboard, mind you. In that, I think Kilcoyne definitely found a nice balance.
However, one of the trappings of using that type of language is that you lose cadence. Instead of the narrative progression ebbing and flowing with the emotional onslaught of the plot—something very important in horror narratives!—it instead becomes a little monotonous. This stunts the immersion of the novel. A way to avoid this is to move from a third-person narration to a first-person one, and I so wish that Wake the Bones had done this. In my opinion this book would have been so much better if it had been told from a first-person perspective, either with a rotating POV, or a singular one focussing on Laurel.
As is, the novel is alright and I might recommend it in a few very specific cases, but it doesn’t stand out as much as it could have.

Thank you NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the e-ARC of Wake the Bones. If I could boil this down, I would describe it as Stranger Things meets The Raven Boys, but with the white-trash-dynamics of Outer Banks. The beginning feels fairly slow, but the intensity of the folk horror is pretty cool.

Wake the Bones

The Gist

Laurel Early is back on her family farm after flunking out of college, back to helping her uncle tend the tobacco fields and spending time with her best friend, Isaac. When weird things start to happen, she has to go back to the past to figure out how to save her future.

My Thoughts

Well, this is a weird one but I liked it! I love horror and I really enjoy when it has a small-town feel, and Wake the Bones has this in spades. The blending of magic into the everyday life of Laurel and her friends is so well done, it’s believable. The devil that took her mother is as creepy as they come and now it’s after Laurel and it will stop at nothing to consume her, and that imagery right there is terrifying. As a person who spends a lot of time outdoors, that first encounter gave me chills!

I love the themes of friendship and romance, along with acceptance that are addressed in the book. It adds to the story for me. I think when there’s love, there’s so much more to lose so it feels all that much more desperate (insert page turning) to make things right and good again.

Bailey Carr narrates this and as usual, she does a phenomenal job.

My thanks to @MacMillan.Audio for this gifted ALC and to @WednesdayBooks for this gifted DRC.

My main take away from Wake the Bones is how much like a horror film it feels. From the slow build-up to the bizarre folkloric monsters that appear, I could see each page scene-for-scene in my head. As much as the horror film-feel did wonders for the novel, it also let it down in not being quite as well done as I’d hoped. The eerie atmosphere quickly gave way to things that fell short of being truly scary, with some disjointed writing adding a level of confusion.

Nevertheless, Elizabeth Kilcoyne does an excellent job of writing an atmosphere bursting with creepiness and sweltering American summers. Despite never visiting the US, Kilcoyne brought the setting to life. The tobacco fields of the Early’s farm, Christine’s trailer and even Garrett’s truck were written as though lived in and very vivid indeed.

The plot of the novel was somewhat basic, and yet somehow too complicated all at the same time. Laurel is introduced as being able to read bones: she can touch a bone and see the last moments of its owner’s life. This unique trait, along with a penchant for taxidermy, makes Laurel Early an intriguing character. But this mystery is overshadowed when Laurel realises there is much more magic she doesn’t know, and desperately needs to in order to save herself and her loved ones.

This is where the confusion comes in. Laurel doesn’t really understand how to work magic, so neither do we. The act of casting spells is left, for the most part, to be rather mysterious and I only found this frustrating. It suggested a certain lack of detail that was disappointing given the quality of other aspects of the novel.

Wake the Bones is an enjoyable YA horror, that won’t offer too many nightmares. Many elements are very well written and the characters are all enjoyable for all their quirks, downfalls, and sweet spots. I do recommend this as a fun foray into the horror genre.

Content note: ‘Wake the Bones’ contains themes and scenes of domestic violence, homophobia and magic-related self-harm.

Thoughts

I liked this book. It was a lot slower than I anticipated. It took some time to build itself up. I didn't mind that, but I know some might. It definitely isn't the YA standard.

Pros
Pleasantly Grotesque: This book is macabre in just the right way. Follow the trail of oozing blood into these haunted woods, and you will find macerated bone murals. Laurel is a taxidermist, making art from the bones she takes from the woods, and she might just have a bit of bone witchery to her blood. The haunting itself drips with dark images of eldritch horror--all in all, this book embraces the grotesque as it spins this new Southern Gothic side of Americana.

Perspective Hop: Elizabeth Kilcoyne uses perspective shifts in the perfect way. Carefully switching between the cast of dead-end characters wonderfully builds suspense and foreboding. The characters are salt-of-the-earth, but they all experience life in different ways. And as their life starts to shift and change, that becomes all the more apparent as we get a chance to look through their eyes.

Christine: I mean, what's not to love about a grumpy gas station witch? Christine doesn't fit in this town, but she doesn't mind taking up a spot in it anyway. She's unapologetic, but she's also apathetic. You've got to push for her witchy insight if you want it. The fact that ghosts come to her for help only annoys her; she's got other things to deal with than dead people's headaches. I think she was a great addition and a unique voice to add to this tale.


Cons
Too Much Work Detail: Several years ago, I read and enjoyed Janet Edwards's Earth Girl, a sci-fi book featuring a team of student archaeologists excavating Earth's great cities after humanity's inevitable collapse. I recommended this book to my book club at the time, who also enjoyed it, though with one caveat. Many of the club felt that Edwards spends far too much time detailing the actual archaeological work--the dirt, the rocks, the meticulous provenance process. I had no such problem with the book, but then, archaeology is and has always been interesting to me--so much so that I studied it at a university level. Reading this book, I finally got a taste of what my friends meant about Earth Girl years ago. The details might not be excessive in this farm work, but they are indeed laborious. The sweat, the sun, the hornworms, the muddy boots--all of it sets the scene, but little of it was interesting to me. I'm sure others will have no such qualm, but it was just a little too occupation-specific for my tastes.

Lack of Panic: In the moment, when bony eldritch horror is reaching for young souls, there is certainly a bit of panic. But after an escape, all that panic--all that sense of urgency--fades away. Nothing felt urgent outside of each spooky scene. Nothing felt rushed. The whole story felt like it was idling, lazy in the summer heat of the setting. I needed more of a sense of terror. At least one of the characters had to be feeling it, right?

Old: This book is full of old themes and old souls. The characters don't feel young, burdened by adult problems as they are. They are, as Laurel's uncle often reminds them, adults. They're not spirited 17-year-olds posing as adults, and their story isn't snappy and fast like a lot of YA horror. This isn't a problem, per se, with Kilcoyne's book. It's a problem with the marketing. This book feels like an adult book. It doesn't feel YA at all, even though it is marketed as such.

Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
7/10

Fans of Rory Power's Burn Our Bodies Down will enjoy this new, twisted interpersonal drama. Those looking for another side of supernatural horror to their iconic Americana after Ann Fraistat's What We Harvest will enjoy this new small down drenched in eldritch horrors.

I saw this book on Instagram and was immediately taken by the cover and the title.
It did not disappoint at all. What a debut!

The world building is fantastic. The sights, sounds and touch, all of it was wonderfully written to give you an incredible sense of what is happening.
The story is solid and the characters, while a little flat, were good.

My one problem was that there were times that I was confused about whose POV I was in. The chapters are not labeled but it wasn’t too distracting.

I also don’t need to have some elaborate story on how magic works in the book. I am fine with magic being magic and that’s it. Maybe others wouldn’t like that.

Overall, I recommend this book. I look forward to reading more from this author.

There are mentions of homophobia and abuse. Please read descriptions and any warnings.

Lush, horrifying, and atmospheric, this book is my new summer obsession!

The problem with southern gothic that I find is that its very easy to get lost in the weeds of the slow pacing and languid prose, but I thought this was a really successful balance. Sometimes the dialogue got a little bogged down, but overall a manageable read.

I was a little surprised that this is actually YA! Certainly for an older teen I'd say, more of a New Adult crowd in terms of content.

I will say that the plot felt a little disjointed at times, with uneven pull between Laurel's struggles with the farm, Isaac's desire to leave, and whatever Christine had going on.

3.5 stars. I don’t know if I’d qualify this novel as horror or sci-fi. Either way, it was definitely different. Laurel Early lost her mother as a child and has been raised by her uncle on the family tobacco farm. Her hobbies include taxidermy and the bones she’s working with have started to “come alive.” Apparently, Laurel has a bit of magic to her and there is an evil on the farm that her mother died fighting. Laurel and her friends are tasked with trying to defeat the same devil.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Wednesday books for this e-arc.*

I did not finish this title. I stuck it out through about 80% of the audiobook but couldn't finish it. Definitely not my kind of book, which I thought would be more magic and less horror. I am not a squeamish reader but I felt like a lot of the things included in this book were gratuitous and didn't do much to advance the plot. Slow pacing did not help with this either.

My one positive is that the narrator was excellent and did a great job with the Kentucky twang.

4.25 Stars

Thank you to Wednesday Books and Netgalley for an arc of this book.

Wake the Bones is a Southern Gothic YA Fantasy that has Laurel coming home after dropping out of college and discovering evil and magic and ghosts lingering on her land that she hadn't noticed before. Together with her friends Isaac, Garrett, and Ricky, Laurel works to solve the mystery of the Devil that is haunting her land and what truly happened to her mother all those years ago.

This was a great atmospheric read! I listened to the audio and was really invested right away. It was easy to get drawn into the world of the story and the magic going on around Laurel and her friends. I also understood the plight of Isaac loving both loving and hating where he lived and feeling like he needed to leave to really be himself.

Laurel and Isaac were both really compelling and three dimensional characters. I wish that some of the other characters had also felt that way, but they felt a little more static to me. I wish we could have delved more into Christina and her magic because that part of the story really drew me in but it was so small.

Overall a really creepy and interesting read!

Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death of parent, Body horror, and Blood
Moderate: Physical abuse and Homophobia
Minor: Suicide and Suicidal thoughts

Elizabeth Kilcoyne’s debut novel, Wake the Bones, comes with a paragraph-long trigger warning at its start as to all its disreputable contents. Having now read the book, I can’t remember what this young adult tome was trying to warn me away from. However, there’s a reason for the trigger warning and that has to do with the fact that this is a book meant for young adults between the ages of 12 and 18 — and putting the f-word twice into your book may be a cause of consternation for some parents. I’m kind of two minds when it comes to these types of warnings: I suppose if you’re squeamish, these points can guide you towards whether you’ll want to read the book or not. However, I also think they’re a little bit overdone: it’s as though the author or publisher is saying “look at how controversial this book is!” in a flagrant attempt for you to get to read it. And I’m reminded of the pseudo trigger warning that graces the opening of the film Cannibal Ferox. It was the sort of thing that promised so much blood and gore that I wanted to watch the film through my fingers. Except, well, by the time the film got going, I didn’t find it all that scary at all!

In any event, Wake the Bones is a YA horror novel that mixes up horror with confusion. It is very hard to tell what’s going on with this book. However, it does center around a 20-year-old-ish woman named Laurel, whose mother died sometime before in an apparent suicide. Laurel has decided to drop out of college, where she was studying to be a veterinarian, to instead work on her uncle’s tobacco farm in rural Kentucky — dabbling in taxidermy on the side. She’s friends with some of the neighourhood kids, including Isaac, a non-binary character who is gay, and Garrett, who is in love with Isaac but, unlike Isaac, does not want to leave Nowheresburg, U.S.A., behind anytime soon. Anyhow, as the characters go about their business, strange things start happening in the woods adjacent to Laurel’s uncle’s farm. Sooner than you can say the words “deer carcass,” the characters find out there’s a devil in the woods that wants Laurel. Why? I read this book and have absolutely no flipping idea why!

As you can tell, there were things about this read that had me wanting to throw my Kindle across the room. (I was reading the book as an advance e-galley.) I do have to be generous, though, and say that Wake the Bones is competently constructed. And by that, I mean that the whole point of Chapter 1 is to get you to Chapter 2 and Chapter 2’s point is to get you to Chapter 3. This whole thing is built like a car on an assembly line. It’s just got that kind of feel to it. And there are parts of this that are very well done, such as when a witch named Christine introduces herself — stealing every scene she’s in. (I kind of wish the entire book was written from her point of view.) I also must say that the book is original in its depiction of monsters and things that go bump in the night. Who would have thought that a skeleton made from different animal parts could be so creepy?

However, the book ultimately falls flat — largely because this is Kilcoyne’s first book and she’s still a novice in many respects. For instance, at one point Laurel is told that the only way to kill the devil that’s after her and her friends is to fight back with magic. At which exact same point, Laurel becomes some sort of magician on the spot. No long apprenticeships. No figuring out what to do. No, boom! She’s suddenly capable of using magic and defeating her demons. What the fudge? That’s not all that bothered me about the read. I’m guessing that Laurel and her friends are in their early 20s, but they act rather immaturely for their age. And so, I kept waiting for the devil monster thing that is hunting Laurel and company to start picking people off one by one. You will be disappointed to learn this (because this is a horror novel and I’m flagging this as a massive spoiler) but nobody dies in this book. Well, unless they’re already dead, and that’s another thing I could go off on. When Laurel tells her uncle Jay she can see the ghost of her mother, Jay just kind of accepts it in his own way. He doesn’t grab Laurel and peel off with her in his truck to the nearest psychiatric facility. Nope. Ghosts are matter of fact in rural Kentucky.

There’s probably a lot more stuff I could point out hating about this mercifully short novel. I could go on about the Isaac / Garrett romance. While it’s great to introduce young readers to queer fiction and characters, their story. is. boring. Honestly, it’s so two-dimensional and cardboard-like that any attempt at romance fizzles on the page. Again, you might wish that the devil in these pages was strong enough to kill off one of these characters just to spare readers from all the navel-gazing about the need to live beyond small towns and trite clichés about homophobic fathers. So if I have a trigger warning of my own it might be to advise young people to stay away from books like this. Not because they’re violent. It’s because Stephen King does this type of thing so much better (and, yes, with buckets of more gore than you’ll find here). Your best bet, because time and life are short, is to start at any one of the sixty-plus books he’s written. It’ll save you from having to piece together a broken Kindle because you just couldn’t take a hackneyed plot and flat characters in a terrible novel that is only redeemable because it is put together like a Ford. In other words, this book will trigger anyone who gets angry when a halfway decent concept is so poorly executed — as it is here. Avoid this unless you’re really, really curious. It stinks.

This book has potential of being something very spooky, however for me it felt flat. The characters weren't super interesting there were too entangled with their personal dramas and the spookiness ended up being the backstory.

Thank you NetGalley for an ARC of this book! I really enjoyed the premise of the book and thought it was super intriguing but I found the characters rather boring and somewhat unlikeable but overall this was a pretty cool read!

Can I give a book 4 stars based entirely on vibes alone? Just watch me.

But seriously, Southern Gothic is a subgenre I adore a lot, so reading it was an absolute delight. If you don't know, Southern Gothic is a mix of fantasy and horror, being watched from the tall grasses on the farm, whispers in the town, something otherworldly in the field, etc. and this book delivered on those vibers perfectly! The writing really sold it. I could feel the humidity and taste the dirt in the air.

I liked the character dynamics even if I wasn't fully invested in the romantic relationships. Laurel has come back to her hometown from her freshman year of college after dropping out and her friends aren't super happy she wasn't able to make it out of their small town. The themes of no longer being children and uncertainty at the future are definitely within these friendship dynamics, which I really liked.

While Laurel is the main POV, we do get POVs of some of her friends, two of whom are gay and are dealing wit their feelings for each other and whether they can survive in their small Southern town. I had no idea there were queer characters in this when I agreed to the eARC, so this was a nicec surprise!

Like I said, I gave this book 4 stars! If you want something spooky for summer, this is it. Just don't read it if you can't handle dead animals, those are very present throughout the novel.

Schedules to post 7/9/22.

I was pretty much on the verge of DNFing this book through its entirety, mainly because the prose was toeing the line of being too florid for me. Don't get me wrong; I like beautiful writing. But this meanders into the unnecessarily dense to the point where I kept losing the plot.

Probably another reason why I kept losing the plot was because there wasn't a whole lot of one to begin with. There was a lot of filler in this story, and not just the overwritten prose. The deviation into Isaac's story I didn't get at all. I mean, I liked him enough as a character. Hell, I liked him more than Laurel. But I didn't see the point in going into his POV and telling his story. It felt largely irrelevant to the plot. There were also a couple of nearly nonsensical chapters from Jay's POV as well that I really didn't see a point to. I liked Ricky's POV and Christine's POV because their points of view weren't as florid as Laurel's. It was nice getting out of her head and getting to something I could actually keep track of. Ultimately these alternate points of view, aside from Issac's, were largely to character develop Laurel. That's not a tactic I'm a fan of.

Speaking of Christine, her sole function in this story is as a plot device. She literally serves no other purpose than to provide Laurel the things she needs to solve her problems. Without Christine, Laurel would have been eaten by the devil, or whatever he wanted to do to her. I very much know why Christine was there, because without her, Laurel would have been screwed. But it would have been nice if she had an actual part.

Laurel herself comes off as a bit flaky. Maybe this was my interpretation of all the overwritten language in her head, but she seemed to float around a lot. It made it hard for me to connect with her. Then her magic felt, like Christine, to be a plot device. There was no real rhyme or reason for it and it was there when Laurel needed it to be there to serve her purpose. All around, her magic felt convenient.

There were definitely moments in the story that felt very gothic and moody and creepy. Everything with the walking bones was unsettling. I think there was supposed to be some body horror in here too, but with how overwritten the prose was, it was hard for me to picture a lot of what was going on, or really connect with the story much at all. I think it has a lot of potential, but I think it was more concerned with trying to have pretty words than telling an actual story. And there were ample opportunities for there to be a solid, meaty story. I wish they had been taken. Like I said: I like my pretty prose, but it doesn't make up for a lack of story.

2.5

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publishers for allowing me this ARC in exchange for my honest review.!

Going in, I really enjoyed the eerie southern gothic feeling this book had. You’re introduced to Laurel, who recently dropped out of college and returns to the farmhouse where she’s lived her whole life with her uncle.

I wished there was more magical and monster-centered aspects of the book however. I felt like it relied too heavily on the conflicts of the relationships between the 4 friends and not enough on the spooky side. I liked Christine’s character but she felt like she was just a tool that was there to help Laurel out and be her mentor. She didn’t have her own story except for the little backstory in the beginning. If she’s so powerful and magical I wanted to see her do more.

I liked the relationships. I wanted Issac and Garret to be together but I understood Issac’s need to get out of town and be far away from his father. I liked Ricky but I didn’t like his decision making as much. I felt like there was no point in the end for him to sacrifice himself for Laurel. It didn’t really serve a purpose but to help move the plot along with the devil. Also I kind of wanted to know why the devil was doing what he was doing and what his purpose was with Laurel, Anna, and their farm. I liked the southern atmosphere and living in the south I could understand a lot of the issues and wanting to leave but also wanting to stay close to your family and land.

As a debut, I thought it was very good. I’m definitely interested to see what else this author has to write in the future. Keep up the great work!

RTC I've gotta think about this one.

***

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I've thought about it, so here I am. Bear with me as I attempt to put into words the confusion I'm suffering. Three stars, you say? Not bad, not bad. It would be two if the prose weren't so good, keep that in mind.

So here we have Laurel Early in rural Dry Valley, Kentucky, freshly dropped out of college. Her family's tobacco farm is her future now, and she has her three best friends from childhood to welcome her home for the summer: Isaac, Garrett, and Garrett's older brother Ricky. As with a lot of rural places, the Early family cemetery is on the farm land, and the place that serves as Laurel's mother's grave is an old dried-up well. Less than 24 hours after being home, the well is busted open like something burst out of it, leaving a huge pool and trial of blood.

Well well well.

Laurel knows that her family is "cursed" according to local myth and legend, but she never thought she'd have to confront that curse herself, or that it would be so dangerous to contend with.

This story, guys. Guys, THIS STORY. I wanted to love it so badly. The potential was there, the buildup in the first third crept into my skin, and the monster had such promise.

The only thing that really worked in this entire novel were 1) the rural setting, 2) the characters being so complex, and 3) the prose. It is not a good sign that if you replaced the horror element in your HORROR novel with something contemporary and current, that that book would be the same book, GUYS. This monster could have been Deliverance-style rednecks, and that would have had the exact same effect. It could have been corporate douchebags intimidating the Earlys for their land, and it would have been the same! It could have been GENTRIFICATION OF RURAL PROPERTY, AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE SAME!

The monster is an ornament in WAKE THE BONES. It barely raises the stakes. No one is in serious danger, the last face-off ends in a splutter, and it only really shows up in force three times. That's once every 100 pages, and that's not good enough for a novel this dark. And as for WHY the monster is doing what it's doing, well, with a gun to my head and the hammer cocked, I couldn't tell you. We're given some vague reasoning as to why it's on the land and what it's doing to the tobacco fields, but that felt flimsy enough to be a soggy piece of bread in the sink: poke it and it falls apart. This is not a horror novel. It's a gothic featuring a monster.

Is it sufficiently gothic? Yes, this book is a creeper vine around your neck. That part is clear and comes through like a brick to the head. I LOVE the claustrophobia of gothic novels, and WAKE THE BONES checks every box on the list, including the oppressiveness of a Southern summer.*

I want so badly to talk about the ending and how the last quarter of this book made me so annoyed. Not even angry. I'm not mad, just disappointed. All the things I wanted to happen that would have jacked the tension up to 11 just...fizzled. We were given not much of a conclusion to speak of. Maybe I'm a contrarian, but a novel that calls itself horror needs to show up and deliver. As a gothic, WAKE THE BONES is great. As horror, it's much more than lacking. It verges on derivative.

*Fun fact: I was born and raised in coastal Maine, and in undergrad, the choir went to Virginia in April for a tour. You know those videos of polar bears passed out on rocks in the sun? That was essentially the effect on me. I couldn't believe how hot it was already, and people were around in pants and jackets. PANTS. AND JACKETS. No wonder you guys are cold up here in June.

This was very interesting and unique and dealt with some heavy topics. I highly recommend the author’s trigger warnings. I’m very glad they included those. It helps me to have advance warnings on things.