Wake the Bones is a story about a girl who gives up on college and returns to her hometown. Like any normal girl, all the wants to do is her taxidermy and not be bothered. But there's something out there, and it's after her.

Where do I start? With wake the Bones I was hoping for a deeply atmospheric horror, but what I got instead was a story full of flat characters and gross-out horror (my least favorite kind). I didn't like Laurel or any of the other characters, so much so I couldn't even tell you any of their names. Was one Jake? Aside from the characters lacking depth, the story was all over the place. I had a really hard time following it as it was super disjointed.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ALC. Bailey Carr was a fine narrator. Unfortunately, this book wasn't for me.

Wake the Bones is a debut YA southern gothic horror novel with fantasy elements by Elizabeth Kilcoyne. The ebook version is 320 pages. I listened to the audiobook, which clocks in at a little over nine hours and is narrated by Bailey Carr. We follow our main character with a third-person point-of-view.

Laurel Early just failed out of college and returned to the sleepy little tobacco farm on which she grew up. She figures she'll get back to working as a tobacco hand and taxidermist, all the wile trying to forget about the guy she shouldn't have fallen in love with. But now a devil from her past has returned to court her, just as he did her dead mother many years before. Will she be able to tap into her own innate magic while figuring out her mother's terrifying legacy before everyone she knows and loves is doomed?

I'm pleased to see more authors having a note at the beginning of a book noting content warnings, and then pointing you to their website for an even more detailed description.

I think this book leans on the New Adult side of YA. Overall I really enjoyed it! Kilcoyne does a great job with her ominous descriptions and lyrical prose. This is a very strong debut and I'll definitely be picking more up from the author in the future. There's some great representation regarding queer people living in a small town with a few of the side characters that I really was glad to see.

My only real critique is that I wish that this book was multi-POV a bit, if only to follow Ricky a bit more closely during the latter half of the book. I can understand why the author stuck with just Laurel's point-of-view but getting more in-depth knowledge on Ricky would have been really cool.

CW: mental and physical abuse, violence, suicide, dental trauma, guns, postpartum depression, drug use, animal death, blood, abuse by an alcoholic parent, homophobia

Special thanks to Macmillan Audio, Wednesday Books, Macmillan, and NetGalley for providing an audio galley of this book for me to review. All opinions contained herein are my own.

When I think about Elizabeth Kilcoyne’s book Wake the Bones the word that immediately springs to mind is atmospheric. Having visited a few over the years, I’d say she dead-on nails the feel of a small rural southern town. And Bailey Carr was a perfect choice for the narrator. The combination of Kilcoyne’s vivid descriptions and Carr’s narration absolutely brought everything to life. I swear I could see the world, smell and taste the environment. The story is about Laurel Early, a college dropout who only wants to return to a normal life on her uncle’s tabacco farm, indulging in her passion for taxidermy. But things can never be that simple, and the dead …well they don’t rest easy There is magic in the wild. Laurel herself is magic. This is a wild story with a lot going on, and I’m not afraid to admit for a while I wasn’t completely sure what the heck was going on, but even so I never had a desire to stop listening. And when the ‘patched together’ bone creature made its first appearance I was completely hooked. Creepy and twisted, and at times slow paced, which felt strangely appropriate given the small town setting, this is a tale that’ll stick with you even after you’ve finished reading/listening. Thanks so much to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for allowing me to listen and review an audio ARC of Wake the Bones.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/wake-the-bones-elizabeth-kilcoyne/1139985552?ean=2940176378818&bvnotificationId=55eeb287-0202-11ed-9b84-0e1ff86467ff&bvmessageType=REVIEW_APPROVED&bvrecipientDomain=gmail.com#review/212871399

https://www.amazon.com/review/R1F9O5XLEN8QWD/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

Demons and magic and dead things, oh my! I've been in such a mood for gore, horror and all things paranormal lately. I swear the publishing gods at Wednesday Books have heard my soul speak. Especially with releases like Wake the Bones that hit shelves yesterday.

Wake the Bones is a southern gothic young adult novel with a touch of Appalachian folklore. Laurel Early goes back home to the Early farm when college becomes a bit more than she can hack. Going home doesn't bode to be easier as her and her friends fight a sinister darkness hungry for their lives.

I did a mixture of reading and listening to this novel and found myself completely immersed in the narrative. This was also my first audio read by Bailey Carr and my experience was not disappointing. She captured emotion, tone and the persona I envisioned for Laurel.

This felt like a mostly character driven novel with a few adaptive plot points that pushed things forward. The characters, though not deeply, deeply fleshed out, were easy to follow and each held instances of their own POV. Laurel may be the MC but her role is highly supported by her friends Garrett, Isaac and Ricky. Christine is the town outcast that the locals claim is a witch. Little do they know how close that title lands. I liked the way the author mixed real life issues of the characters with the paranormal: abusive family members, lgbtq representation, small town prejudices, parent death and romance.

The way Kilcoyne crafts the demonic creature haunting (stalking) Laurel is one of my favorite parts. The descriptive writing was excellent. The creative touch of the witchlike abilities of Laurel and Christine tied in well with the backstory of Laurel's mother. I especially liked the twist it takes at the end. It wasn't expected and upped the overall enjoyment for me.

There are a few areas that were slower than I would've liked. I also had a few moments where I kept mixing up the three guys too. Personal issue on my own end but it caused a lot of rereading for me. When it came to the audio, I would've liked a little more distinction between the male characters in voice. Overall though, I slammed through this book in a weekend.

This was exactly the kind of debut I've been itching for. I look forward to reading more from the mind of Kilcoyne in the future! Thank you Macmillan Audio for the gifted copies in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. All thoughts are my own.

After dropping out of college, Laurel returns home to find something sinister has moved to her farm, & it’s laid his eyes on her.

Some reviewers have said they don’t agree with this book being categorized as YA. I agree with that, but not because of the horror elements.. Other reviewers have said this book isn’t scary at all. I do not agree with that. There are definite elements of horror in this book, I just wish the author hadn’t gotten so tied up in secondary character relationships. I feel like social dialog took precedence over pace which was unfortunate because this could have been a truly terrifying book had it been paced well.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to listen to this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

While this is exactly the darkly lyrical prose that I love and a lot of the themes of guilt and loss were given really beautiful metaphor, the plot and characters fell a little flat for me. So this is a little more of a 3.5 rounded down.

Laurel Early left her family farm near a small town to go to college, but it wasn’t long before she dropped out and found herself back home again. Things went back to how they’d always been – working in tobacco fields with high school friends and practicing taxidermy during her free time. But one day, she runs across a warning left on her land, learning that her mother practiced magic and an evil being is after Laurel’s blood.
A little slow but intriguing read. Very beautiful and disgusting descriptions!

I must admit, I did not enjoy the audiobook version of this one 🤦‍♀️. I found the narrators… not to my liking. Unfortunately I think that swayed my opinion of the actual story itself and I wonder if I read the story I may enjoy it more?

I found the story itself hard to follow and confusing at times. I could picture certain elements clearly but couldn’t put everything together as a whole.

I did however, love the horror aspect of the story and how dark the theme was. Some of the prose were beautifully written as well. I’m definitely interested in reading more from this author in the future 🙌.

Given the massive amount of male characters, a female narrator was odd. It was jarring to listen to the narrator try to use a deeper voice most of the time, making the narrative even more confusing.

Thank you for an early audio copy in exchange for my honest review.

The production itself was done really well. The narrator was easy to listen to. As for the story, it was decent. I think I'm just not the demographic for it. It reads as YA horror, which I love horror but being a thirty-something year old, I found the YA portion to be aggravating. BUT this isn't because the story is bad--totally on me.

There's supernatural parts that were creepy fun and witchy stuff I enjoyed. I wasn't too attached to the characters though and didn't care much for relationships.

Solid horror YA though.

3/5

**3.5-stars**

When Laurel Early left for college, she was excited to be escaping her small farm town in rural Kentucky. It's what everyone from there dreams of, but few succeed at. Unfortunately, Laurel didn't succeed either. The big city life of Cincinnati was overwhelming. She begin to fail her classes and then stopped going altogether once she realized she could just go home.

She returned home to her Uncle Jay's farm, but hadn't come clean with her best friends yet. They just think she's home for the summer. In addition to working on the tobacco farm, Laurel is also a taxidermist of sorts. She doesn't seem like the type of taxidermists that I am aware of, but she deals in a lot of animal remains, particularly their bones.

It doesn't take long after she returns to town that the horrors begin. Blood trails on the farm, massacred animals, dreams of her dead mother. The whole atmosphere is frightening, but in addition to all of that, there is a lot of normal, contemporary issues happening for Laurel and her friend group, made up of Isaac, Ricky and Garrett.

There are rumors that the Early farm is haunted, but a local girl, Christine, who everyone knows is a witch, is the first person to actually say it to Laurel at the time she needs to hear it. It definitely gets her thinking. She needs to get the mystery of their property solved. She's always been haunted by her mother's suicide, but is there even more to the story than anyone knows?

Wake the Bones is a character-driven YA story with dark magical realism elements and a heavy Southern Gothic vibe. I finished this extremely quickly once I started listening to the audiobook. I couldn't stop listening, but I couldn't really decide whether I was enjoying it or not. This was seriously a difficult story for me to rate.

There were many interesting aspects and the horror imagery was very well written, however there were good solid chunks that I found boring. The contemporary character work, it was too in the feels and less in the dark mystery I was hoping for. I can definitely recognize that Kilcoyne writes beautifully, I just think at the end of the day, this particular story was lacking a bit of the pizzazz I was hoping for.

If I had to compare this story to other books, I would say it reminded me quite a bit of Summer Sons, Burn Our Bodies Down and Ghost Wood Song; like the three of them meshed together. It's funny though, because even though I wasn't blown away by this, I can't stop thinking about. I'm basically trying to figure out why I ended up feeling so ambivalent about it.

With all of this being said, I would definitely be interested in picking up future works from this author. I liked the themes explored here, the characters were well done and as mentioned before the horror imagery was great. I would love to see her go even further into the Horror lane.

Thank you to the publisher, Wednesday Books and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with copies to read and review. It's certainly given me a lot to think about!

DNF @ 40%

This book sounded really interesting and I thought that the small town setting would give the opportunity for something really creepy.

Unfortunately, this one took way too long to get going and lost a lot of the tension that it could have had. There were too many chapters interleaved between the exciting ones where the characters were just sitting in the car or in a bar talking and making no progress on the main plot. It made the flow of the book really slow and made me question what was the A plot meant to be (the small town coming of age story or the fantasy story?).

The writing was also incredibly repetitive which made it feel like it dragged even more.

I was bored and after several days of having no motivation to listen, I decided to DNF and read something that I was excited about instead.

On a positive note, I did enjoy the narrator.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the gifted ALC!

As usual I went into this judging the book by its cover - so when it started I found myself confused but intrigued.

This book was so interesting. It’s sort of witchy in nature - but it’s dark. So dark witchy I guess? It definitely fits in the horror genre it’s placed in.

NetGalley granted me access to the audiobook and the narration was fantastic. I love this narrator - she always does an amazing job and just seeing Bailey Carr listed is enough to get me to listen, and there was no disappointment for me here!

I did feel this book was longer than necessary, but the story was still fantastic! ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 rounded up

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.

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 macmillan audio.*

A story of growing up in the shadow of your parent's choices. When her mother makes a deal with the devil on accident Laurel must live with the consequences. But when those are the devil coming back to haunt her and her friends she learns to use her magic to fight him and put him in his place. With her group of friends uniting with her can they save themselves and the family farm?

I think my favorite genre is YA horror. It's always the perfect amount of gore and scare with YA tropes that I just love. Wake the Bones audiobook is a southern gothic horror that I think benefits greatly in audiobook format. The atmosphere is really felt via narration and I couldn't stop once I hit play.

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

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.