Be very quiet, don’t make any noise, and definitely do not go into the old house! This was an amazing and creepy dark fantasy/horror YA story. With vibes from The Hazel Wood, Wilder Girls, and White Smoke it’s sure to keep you flipping pages until the end.

One day Jo ends up receiving notice that her paternal grandmother has passed away, and left her house to Jo. Jo’s mom and step-dad are set on doing what they think is best, ignoring Jo’s wishes, and she and her mom make a trip to “get the estate in order” for sale. Little does she know, her grandmother’s cryptic instructions in the will are soon going to make more sense than she ever imagined.

This was an atmospheric, spooky read that is perfect for fans of thrilling dark fantasy or ya horror. I can’t wait to grab a physical copy for my shelves, and for a reread during Spooky Season!

Jo is 16 years old living with her very pregnant mother and stepfather. When Jo finds out she has inherited her grandmother’s farm. She is surprised but also wants to go and see “her” farm. She doesn’t want to sell as her parents want to. After all, it belongs to her now. Her mother insist on going down to the house to clean it up for selling. Her mother will meet the real estate seller. Jo’s grandmother writes Jo a strange letter telling her among other things that she will know what to do. She goes to the farm with her mother. Amazed that the place has two houses but one is boarded up. When they go into Grammy’s house, they see the house is full of dust and stuff.
She meets Hattie who is watching tv.. She will also meet Tom who runs the farm. Her mother gets sick and stays in bed. Jo takes care of her in spite of their mother’s irritable reaction to everything. Jo decides to check out the old house that is locked and boarded up. As she realizes that she needs to find a key, Hattie tells her not to go in that house. She ends up going inside the house and to the basement. She doesn’t understand what she is seeing. She wants to know why there is such secrecy about this old house. Will she learn the secrets? Will she understand why the small town want her to stay in the town and not leaving. What will Jo do? The more she learns the more she still can’t remember what went on when she was there with her biological father. She wishes she could. Will she remember? Will she know what she has to do?

The book is a slow read especially in the beginning . It’s a book of horror that is done as a mystery. It’s a coming-of-age, Claustrophobic observations build tension in a story that is slow to reveal secrets and deliver on threats. Unfortunately, insensitive language describing mental illness detracts from the vivid portrayal of how traumatic memories operate. Jo refers to standing out due to her olive skin and frizzy black hair, inherited from an absent father of Syrian and Italian origin. It is a strange and suspenseful novel.

Treading on the well-worn trope of a passed-over inheritance, The Cherished brings a unique perspective on fairy tale horror. What appears to be a simple bequeath of property turns into something more dangerous. The story is a slow burn with a long setup from Jo first getting the letter to traveling to the house. I thought it was quite frustrating that her grandmother wasn’t forthcoming and that no one would tell Jo the truth about what was going on at the farm. When the secret is revealed, it’s a sad and shocking situation that haunts not just Jo’s family, but everyone in town.

The book shows the importance of family despite different bloodlines, and it works for the most part. There’s an understanding that family can be found no matter where someone is from. On the other hand, the portrayal of mental illness comes across as outdated. Jo’s father is depicted as having a mental illness, and the way he is treated and spoken about by other characters is quite hurtful. He is also a man of colour, and there was derogatory language about his appearance. I wish that these subject matters had been treated more mindfully considering the young adult audience of this book.

I'm a little torn with my review...

The plot has several layers, and there's a lot of history to unravel throughout the story, but I also think it takes away from the overall story.

And the level of responsibility placed on Jo's shoulders by all of the adults is absolutely absurd... It's basically one toxic relationship after another.

The Cherished us the perfect creepy/spooky vibe book to read that perfectly fills the void I've been chasing since finishing The Hazelwood and the inheritance plot line gives me the inheritance games vibe. This book is all the things I love in one package. I did not see the big twist coming and really shook me up - the creepy vibes kept me up reading all night.

I love a good YA horror thrilller and this was spooky and kept me hooked the whole way through! Fascinating and unique storyline and characters!

Jo is a teen living with her very pregnant mother and her stepfather. She doesn't see eye-to-eye with them or their social circles, so when a letter arrives, informing her that her grandmother has died and bequeathed her home and land to her, she sees a way to freedom: even if she has to wait until she's of legal age for it. Her mother insists she must sell the home - despite Jo's grandmother's very firm assertions that she must never sell - and heads to the home, with Jo, to clean it up and prep for sale. Once there, she meets the tenants of her grandmother's land: a gruff male househand and a childlike teenage girl. As Jo's mother becomes sicker and sicker, Jo spends more time wandering the home and learns more about her father and the delusions that plagued him for his entire life... and she learns some truths that may be too incredible to believe, but are very real and very much a threat. Ward's pacing is excellent, building the suspense to allow readers time to grasp the book tighter as they progress, waiting for answers. An excellent gothic horror novel for teens that enjoy dark fantasy.

I highly enjoyed this. The premise isn't something new, but the way it was written made it fresh and exciting. Definitely give it a try.

3.5/4 Stars. I tried reading this one again and really got pulled into this paranormal young adult novel. I loved the writing style, and the plot was so interesting to me. However, I did find the ending a bit rushed. Thank you for the early copy!

Oof. I don’t even know if I could find the words to rate this one. I previously wasn’t going to rate it but man. Ableist, racially insensitive, and overall offensive at times.

Love a good gothic horror novel featuring a haunted estate. This book wasn’t a huge standout to me, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself while reading.

I honestly couldn’t get through this book. The internal monologue was boring and off putting. The sentences were choppy, or run on. I also didn’t enjoy how much exposition there was. There were fat phobic comments, and comments about mental health that were totally inappropriate, and concerning especially for a YA novel. The racial comments about being “dark skinned”, or possibly Arab, were tasteless. Whereas white people being described as “classy”? Just an unappealing read.

The vibes of THE CHERISHED are very, very good -- it's spooky and hypnotizing and creepy, like wandering through an abandoned garden. I will always be a sucker for 'girl inherits a weird house' plotlines, and I was not disappointed. There's something so incredibly alluring about a weird little town with weird people and weird customs and absolutely no recognition of its own weirdness. The reveal in the last act of the novel was more sinister than I'd expected, and the climactic fight went a lot harder than I thought it would -- certainly not a bad thing! I do think this novel would've been better served with a slight genre shift into New Adult rather than Young Adult -- the logistics of a teen becoming the permanent caretaker of this home requires a lot of suspension of disbelief, and Jo could've used NA's sense of 'I know who I am, but how do I get to be it?' rather than YA's guiding question of 'who am I?' Having her feel a bit more sure of herself but unsure how to make that self fit with her mother and stepfather's expectations more concretely would've made the answer of the house feel more satisfying (and less burdensome).

The Cherished starts where Josephine, the main character receives a letter in the mail telling her, her grandmother has passed and she left the house to Josephine.

Jo is unhappy with her life with her mom and stepdad. They actually want her to sell the house against her wishes.

Jo wants to keep the house because it’s where her late father grew up and she was close to her grandmother.

The house ends up being peculiar and Jo wonders if the stories her dad told her wasn’t just him going crazy…

I usually don’t give books low ratings, but this was a tough read. The book is very slow and bounces around a lot

Okay, so here's the thing. I haven't wanted to write this review because writing negative reviews is hard for me. But I think this one needs to be written. I loved the idea behind this. The description had me genuinely excited to read the book. But I didn't get further than chapter 4. Part of it is genuinely the writing style. The style is a bit stilted, and there are some stylistic choices that make the narrative very hard to follow.

The big problem is the straight-up offensive language used in this book about race, mental health, and fatness. Like, what in the world. The disrespect and disregard shown for people not like the author was infuriating. I won't be recommending this book to anyone and will likely actively encourage people not to read it. Congrats on the very-rare-from-me 1-star rating.

This book had me very confounded. I really don't understand what the author was going for, YA horror? The cover seems to imply that, but I feel that the cover, albeit beautiful, is misleading to the tone of the story. I didn't think this book was good, but not horrible either, just very confusing in tone. The subject matter was fairly dark, but written lightly, especially the ending. The first half felt very jumbled and clunky, but it does improved during the second half. The majority of the book just seemed to be the MC complaining about her mother's marriage to her step dad, instead of the actual plot about fairies.

I really wanted to like this book, but it just wasn't for me. As some other reviews have described, there are a quite a few racial, fatphobic, and generally problematic sections towards the beginning of the book which made it very difficult for me to get into the story. I also found some of it to be a bit repetitive. I see how the author was likely trying to make certain characters unlikeable but it didn't work for me. I've chosen not to finish it at about 1/3 of the way through.

Unfortunately, I cannot give a great review of this book because I found it to be too filled with underlying racist themes, racist comments, fat phobic comments, homophobic comments, and terrible descriptions and slurs for mental illness. I love a good YA Horror book, but even adult horror doesn't bring this level of evil phobia to the page.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Children's Books for the e-Arc.

i could not finish this book. the scenes were so graphic i had to put it down and i couldn’t pick it back up. i tried multiple times to read it because i love horror and i can usually handle a lot but this was too much for me.

Typically I give a book 100 pages before I DNF... I didn't even make it that far with this one. I couldn't find a single thing to like about it