Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert

I received an electronic advanced reader’s copy of this title through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. And honestly, I LOVED it. As I expected to; I’m a fan of Melissa Albert.

Melissa Albert’s first two books, The Hazelwood and The Night Country, (and Tales from the Hinterland, the book of fairy tales referenced in the first two books, which she subsequently wrote), were in the dark fairy tale genre. This new title is more of a domestic mystery/horror.

In Our Crooked Hearts, we switch between following the perspectives of contemporary Ivy in her house in the suburbs, and her mother Dana in the city in the 90s. Having been about Dana’s age in the 90s, the little details about the “alt” community (the music, thrift shops, dyed hair, ripped tights, mood rings) really rang true to me.

The story grabs you right away. We start with Ivy in the car with her boyfriend Nate on the way home from a party. Nate swerves the car abruptly and then tells Ivy it was because he saw a naked young woman in the road. They get out and look for her, but she is not the vulnerable creature they expect to find. From there, strange things keep happening around Ivy until she realizes there is a family secret she needs to uncover.

One of my favorite things about this book was that it was a book about women, their struggles, their relationships, their found families. We really see that in the character of Ivy’s “aunt Fee,” Dana’s found-family “sister” Felecita who also lost a parent at a young age. As Dana thinks, “So. A mother can be a photograph.”

The writing is really lovely. With fairy-tale themed books you almost expect beautiful language. But you really notice here in this contemporary domestic setting. The whole book is peppered with beautiful, unexpected similes, metaphors and descriptions. Just a few non-spoiler examples: “She rose like a backwoods Venus, dirty creek water running out of her hair…” “The dream still coated my skin like Vaseline.” “The uncracked storm pressed its nose to every window, slippery dark and static-charged.”

The characterizations were well done as well. For instance, one side character “…pounced on mispronunciations like a cat on a cockroach. He’d hold up his finger in the middle of a conversation, pull out a notebook and start scribbling in it while you stood there like an asshole.” It really comes through what this person is like.

I have a category of book that I call “not for everyone; yes for me.” This book falls into that category. It’s wonderfully written, but not for everyone. I know many people like to stick to their favorite genre, and there’s nothing wrong with that! I would recommend it to fans of literary horror (there are more of us out there than you may think!), fans of new adult/YA thrillers and/or fans of books about the 90s. I would also recommend it to anyone who reads open-mindedly. If you are debating reading this, do it! It’s terrific! 10/10

Albert has given us fairy tale that is a as delectable as the darkest chocolate. Tangible., lush writing and creepy assed magic have met their match. If Albert writes it, I will read it .

This book gets killer reviews here on Netgalley and on Goodreads. Honestly, this book was just not for me. The cover and the blurb definitely pulled me in. Spooky witchcraft vibes! Totally my kind of book! It just fell short for me.

Written in 2 (sometimes 3) POVs and timelines, I found myself bored and not very interested in Danas POV. It was the central part of the storyline, but I found myself rushing through hers to get to Ivys POV.

For whatever reason, this book didn't "do it" for me. I felt like it was "almost there" though. The story is good, and the author did a good job with it. What I am most impressed with is her correctness of the occult and witchcraft. She definitely nailed it!

Woooow! This is so much better than Hazelwood series! This is the best thing Melissa Albert has written! Actually this is the most mind blowing story about the witches I’ve lately read! Creepy, disturbing, intriguing, exciting, slow burn mystery, and impeccably built, layered character development, well- thrown twists, lots of spells, darkness, heartbreaking teen love story: this book includes all of those amazing qualities, storylines you may fully enjoy!

Let’s get quick recap of storyline: after their uneventful but mostly resentful party time, seventeen years old Ivy struggles with the thoughts to break up with her extra drunk, snob, narcissistic boyfriend Nate during their car ride but when a pale faced, weird naked girl at the same age with Ivy runs around the road , dashing into the woods, things get more escalated . Because seeing that weird girl is the first omen which will change their already dysfunctional and unusual family life!

Ivy is grounded for her troubled night with her ex ( she’s managed to dump his ass) , bleaching her hair, prying around the house to detect more secrets after finding the massacred rabbit at their garden!

She has her own doubts about her mother’s secret ways to protect her and her brother: anyone who tries to mess with them suffers from consequences. She also caught her mother doing weird things at their garden in the middle of the night, hiding things in their basement.

Now her mother and her favorite aunt are missing! The girl she has seen in the woods lurking around her house and the boy next door she has complex feelings insists she broke his heart five years ago. Could she forget something important like this?

We go back and forth to find out more out Dana: the mother witch and Ivy’s stories : both time lines are fascinating to catch up! We see Dana and Felicita’s meeting with Marion, bounding to create their own coven and at the present time we see how Ivy gathers the pieces of the puzzle to solve the big mystery about the secrets her mother has kept from her!

I loved it! I adored it! I truly had great time while I was reading it!

Giving my high recommendation! If you like witches, great mysteries, horror meets thriller, a great example of creative writing skills, this is the best choice you may get!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for sharing probably one of the best fantasy reads of 2022 in exchange my fully honest opinions.

This is a crazy book that unsettles your mind if you're not prepared for it! Ivy and her boyfriend come across a young girl swimming nude in the lake who knows Ivy's name and acts very oddly. Things just get weirder from there. Ivy breaks up with the boyfriend as he's been drinking and driving. The novel vacillates between past and present as we discover Ivy's mother and her three friends experimented with magic when they were young and are still able to create spells (not all of them good). So Ivy must unravel the past and figure out how to reconcile what she knows about her mother now and how that will affect her present fascination with things she isn't clear about. This one kept my brain spinning until I finished!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

Oh man….if you love dark witchy books, is this the book for you. I’ve read lots of witchy books in my day and this is the only one that has actually scared me. This is by far the creepiest, witchiest one I’ve ever read. A dark history involving a witch with a spell book made of skin, reckless teenagers trifling with dark magic, and experiments with the occult gone wrong. I love the dual POV between the present day where the mc suspects something sinister is going on with her mom, and the past from the POV of her mom is where you find out just what happened and the reckless decision making that led to the story’s events. It’s absolutely brilliant and keeps you on your toes, toggling back and forth between a scared daughter and her mother’s past from her POV. The way it unravels is deliciously creepy.

Another thing is that this book, unlike most other books, does not take 200 pages for anything significant to happen. I don’t know why in the world most authors feel the need to take 100-200 pages just to set up an introduction before things start to pick up, but this book caught my attention literally on page two. The way that this book starts…..now THAT is how you suck a reader in. This book is absolutely terrifyingly riveting the whole way through.

Melissa Albert is a supremely talented author and the only reason I took off a star was because for me personally, reading this just felt….wrong, despite it just being a fiction novel that is intended to unsettle to begin with. As a Christian, reading this made me uneasy in a way that I didn’t like. It just made me feel uncomfortable and not in the fun way that creepy horror novels usually do, but in a way that I didn’t like. And don’t get me wrong, I love reading horror. However, I felt like this book took some parts too far for my liking. This is a personal thing though and if you’re not religious then you probably would feel differently about this than I personally did. However, this book was so well written, so riveting, and so entertaining.

This was far creepier than the Hazel Wood, far less confusing, and had an easier to follow plot. The writing is just so imaginative, so unsettling, and felt like a book geared towards dark academia lovers without actually being dark academia. If you’re in the mood to read something creepy, you’ll be captivated by this spooky read.

Thank you to Netgalley and Flatiron books for sending me an advanced copy in return for my honest review.

This was so good I've got to read The Hazel Wood Series now!

Our Crooked Heart's!
This book exceeded my already high expectations; it emanates a quiet power, a slow drawing in and connection of reader to book, one that I found myself able to get lost in due to the lush atmosphere and the depth of emotion. I can see now why this book is getting so much attention, and am thrilled to see where this book heads because it's going to be all over the place. Readers are going to go nuts!
Such unique characters that I am still thinking about days after finishing I know this won't be a read that I soon forget.
Ivy and Dana.... Absolutely adored them! I need more of them please!
This was such a magical and creepy delight.
Albert's writing is magical and engaging and beautifully written from the very beginning, I was invested in its journey and outcome within minutes of opening this story up.
It was a dark, mysterious book that kept me intrigued the entire ride. 

Albert knows how to weave a haunting, mysterious, and gorgeously written story.
I couldn't put this book down!
So many twists and turns, and the world-building on this one is just phenomenal.
Can’t wait to see what Melissa Albert writes next.

Flatiron Books, NetGalley
Thank you for this eARC!
I will post and tag to my platforms closer to the pub date!

I'm six years old and playing with the neighborhood children in the street. It's too hot to exist, but we don't know that and are busily popping the bubbles that rise up from the tar ment to mend the asphalt. Then, a sudden summer downpour begins. My parents haven't noticed yet and have not made us come inside, so I watch the little indents in the pavement fill up with water - cool glass pools outlined with an oily holographic sheen.

That's what reading Melissa Albert feels like, to me.

There main word that comes to mind when reading this book is: fury.

This is a book of furious girls who become furious women. It’s a book of love and betrayal and revenge and, finally, the wonders and horrors that come when you manifest that fury into reality. And, oh, I enjoyed it.

References to The Craft are apt, but it’s really its own book.

The dual timelines are well written, but it was definitely the older timeline that captured my attention.

A good book and well worth the read!

*ARC via Publisher

I rarely ever stay up to finish a book, but it does happen. With Melissa Albert’s latest novel, Our Crooked Hearts, I was thoroughly engaged with the story. And by the time I finished the book and checked the time, it was already after two in the morning and I’d read it basically in one sitting. Our Crooked Hearts was a ride. It was a tale of magic, ambition, the relationships between mother and daughter (and friends), and all the ways that those things could go horribly wrong when the cost of magic is thrown into the fray.

Our Crooked Hearts begins with a mystery, and the dual timelines (past and present) run alongside each other until they reach the point where they inevitably connect. It had the feel of a modern fairy tale: equal parts atmospheric and magical with the dark undertones of a mysterious forest that gives the impression of something lurking. It’s pretty in line with what I’ve come to expect from Albert’s stories. After all, dark and whimsical—magic and the importance of stories—were hallmarks of The Hazelwood, The Night Country, and Tales from the Hinterland.

The present side of the story follows Ivy. After a bad decision and an accident, her plans for the summer pretty much go up in smoke. However, ruined plans don’t hold a candle to the string of events that begin with that night. At first, it could have been strange but a coincidence. But things quickly don’t add up, and the strange occurrences take on a dangerous and frightening edge. Caught up in there was the fraught relationships between Ivy and her family, particularly with her mother. Mistakes, miscommunication, and long kept secrets are the kind of messy family dramas that I like. It certainly kept me turning the pages.

Meanwhile the past follows Dana. This was the part of the book that reminded me most strongly of The Craft—it was the magic and the tenuous comradeship between Dana and her friends—while also being a completely different story altogether in the end. Some bonds were stronger than others, but even well-worn friendships could change. They either grew or shrank as intentions became clear. Dana’s part of the story was heart-wrenching—marked by difficult choices and loss—and it also really demonstrated the danger of messing with things you don’t know.

Our Crooked Hearts is one of the best books I’ve read so far this year.

Disclaimer: this copy of the book was provided by the publisher (Flatiron Books) via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!

This book is so good! I'm so glad I read it.
Thank you Melissa, Cat, Flatiron Books and NetGalley for the wonderful ARC.

When I heard Melissa Albert was releasing a new book I was super excited. For those of you that read and enjoyed her Hazel Wood series (if you haven’t, you really need to), you’re aware of how magical her stories are. Not just magical but….enchanting. While this story is different from her others, it’s just as good.

The chapters alternate between present day (the daughter’s POV - Ivy) and the past (the mother’s POV - Dana). It’s a mystery, of sorts. What happened in the past with Dana is coming back to haunt them and Ivy is trying to figure it all out, before it’s too late. I loved all the characters. And the plot was…wow.

There is (dark) magic. There is suspense. There is the same kind of strange spookiness that is sprinkled throughout all of her stories. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.

Melissa Albert is an instant buy for me. I preorder her books as soon as they’re available. She’s that good. The pub date for this one is June 28th. Thanks to @netgalley and @flatiron_books for the gifted copy.

And I’m still preordering a copy since I need it in print 🤷🏻‍♂️

Thank you Netgalley and Flatiron Books for allowing me to read and review! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Our Crooked Hearts is a dual POV story between a mother's past, a daughter's present and a supernatural mystery they shouldn't have messed with.

I greatly enjoyed The Hazel Wood and it's sequel The Night Country. I haven't read the companion book full of stories from the duology but I plan to do so very soon. After reading the duology I knew I needed to get my hands on Melissa Albert's next release. Albert knows how to weave a haunting, mysterious, and gorgeously written story. I couldn't put this book down! I loved the twists and reading from Ivy and her mother Dana views.

5 stars

Overall, I thought this was an interesting read. I think having 2 timelines told in 1st person took a little while to get used to, but it was interesting to see the connections between the two stories.

This book was so fantastic! Between the two different timelines I was hooked! I couldn’t put this down! I never knew I needed a spooky read in summer.

Another amazing addition to Melissa Albert's talent! A fantastic journey into some of the darker magic places that we all secretly love. In following tradition of the Hazelwood, this story keeps you wanting more and then sad when it's all over. I can't wait to see what else comes from this story. Definitely a must read for any fantasy fan!

This story starts cryptic and mysterious and build to something part mystery part thriller. I don’t want to give too much away but it’s one of the best books I’ve read all year. I really like the characters and the story is really compelling.