DNF @ 57%

This is the first time I'm DNF'ing an ARC, but I want to make it clear that I really appreciate the opportunity and that I really tried my hardest. This is completely an it's-me-not-you type of situation.

I failed to connect to anybody and anything. I was never pulled in and eventually, I didn't want to pick this back up and read. I was stalling reading on purpose just so I wouldn't have to dive back into something that felt so lukewarm TO ME. Here Lies Olive felt more MG than YA, which is fine (though it is a specific pet peeve of mine), but it mostly just felt... very basic. There was nothing in particular that captured my attention in any way. The plot and the characters all felt a bit cardboard to me, and it didn't feel like a book coming out in 2023 at all (if we take away the lovely queer rep).

This one just really didn't work for me, unfortunately.

DNF @37%

Unfortunately I had too many problems with this book to continue reading.

Firstly, I didn't like the characterisation of Olive, which made it difficult to read the story since it's written from her perspective. After almost having died from an allergic reaction Olive has trouble living her life like before and becomes obsessed with what happens after dying. She doesn't feel connected to her family and friends anymore and starts neglecting them. These are of course very understandable trauma responses, and I relate to them to a certain extent because of my severe health and pain issues. However, the way it made Olive feel 'superior' (I don't know what to call it) was really uncomfortable for me. For example, Olive says it's a luxury that her friends haven't thought (or had to think) about what comes after death yet, which seems like a very insensitive thing to think - especially about her Navajo friend David whose grandparents are residential school survivors. Maybe this all wouldn't have been such an issue for me if Olive was written in a more three-dimensional way, and if the topics of death and the afterlife were approached with more nuance and depth.

Secondly, I thought the way colonialism and racism were discussed didn't do justice to the horrors they entail. Comments about stolen land and police brutality, among others, were thrown in randomly and often flippantly. For example, the author writes that the abandoned asylum a large part of the story takes place in was - "in true arrogant American fashion" - built on land that was set aside for the Navajo reservation. 'Arrogant' feels like a very weird term that understates the horror of stealing Indigenous land. The story often acknowledges the suffering of the (white) people who were abused in the asylum, but not the suffering of the Indigenous people who lived in that area. Olive even says it must be terrible for Maren, her potential love interest, to be the great-granddaughter of the founder of the asylum because "the only thing Maren has to do with it is her name, and she can't help that". And then there's David's dad, a member of the Navajo Nation, who is planning to demolish the asylum with his land-development firm and build on the graves of the people who died there - which seems to me like a strange storyline to choose, knowing that colonisers often built on Indigenous burial grounds.

However, I am white and not Indigenous (and I'm from Belgium, not the US), so my opinion on this matter is not important. But since I haven't found many other reviews that talk about this yet, I wanted to mention it.

Lastly, I thought it was a bit frustrating that the book tries to acknowledge cultural diversity but then makes it seem as if there can only be one interpretation of the afterlife and of ghosts or spirits.

Maybe some of the things I mentioned here changed throughout the rest of the book, but unfortunately I couldn't motivate myself to keep reading.

My rating: ⭐️⭐️ (I don't like to rate books I haven't finished, but since it's required I give it 2 stars based on what I have read.)

Thank you to NetGalley and Flux for the eARC!

What a great story! Olive is a character I felt was easy to relate to. The way she copes with her own death and then being brought back to life feels real. Kate truly illustrates the stages a grief and regret in a relatable way. This is a great spooky season book, with it all taking place in October. I can’t wait to see what else Kate writes!

I received a copy from Netgalley for review.

So I'm DNFing at 35%. I don't know what it is about this story. but I'm just not into it at all. We follow Olive (who recently had a brush with death), Davis, Vanessa and Maren, while they try to assist Jay (who's like dead for real) find his grave so that he can finally be at rest, and maybe get some details about the ever after for Olive. Which sounds like a decent story, but I don't think it was well executed (obviously because I'm DNFing). There was just something missing to make me want to hold my interest while I read. I literally would rather doom scroll on tiktok than read this story.

Here Lies Olive by Kate Anderson

What you can expect:
➺ In Here Lies Olive, we traverse through the specters of death alongside Olive. Following a near-death experience and the loss of a friend, Olive becomes enveloped in a dark obsession, pondering the mysteries of the afterlife and navigating through her teenage years under this morbid shadow.

Themes:
➺ Death, The Afterlife, Teenage Perception, Existential Inquiry, Paranormal, Trauma, Love

What I liked:
➺ I was instantly drawn by the chilling allure of the paranormal and the exploration of weighty, metaphysical questions through the eyes of a young protagonist. The promise of a cozy small town, a hauntingly abandoned asylum, and a paranormal romance seemed to be a checklist of captivating elements.
➺ There's a potent mix of elements that usually spell enthrallment: a dash of paranormal, the cozy confinement of a small town, echoes of unsolved mysteries in a deserted asylum, and the tender exploration of young love.


What I didn't like:
➺ Overbearing Repetition: Olive’s initially intriguing obsession with death rapidly morphs into an annoying drumbeat, reverberating insistently and diminishing the complexity of her character into a seemingly two-dimensional portrayal.
➺ Stagnant Emotional Development: The narrative seems to be engulfed in its own repetitive emotional beats, recycling Olive's fear and sadness into an almost predictable pattern rather than allowing room for diverse emotional or narrative arcs.
➺ Inconsistent Characterisation: Certain characters, like Vannessa, threw me off balance with plot twists that seemed slightly forced and justifications that felt paradoxical, such as juxtaposing empathy with manipulation.
➺ Half Baked Plot: With a trove of intriguing plot elements, the underdeveloped narrative arcs and the characters' lack of genuine struggle or evolution was disappointing.

Final Musings:
Alright, so Here Lies Olive started off with some real promise. We got this creepy-cool mix of themes, a dab into the unknown, and honestly, who doesn't want to unravel a good mystery about the afterlife? But, oh lord, it kinda trips over its own vibe as we dive deeper. Even though it tries to dive into these huge, profound questions about death and what comes after, it kinda gets lost.

And the character developments? Some moments I was like, "Wait, what?" It’s like it was on the verge of digging deep into something really meaningful and just kind of... wandered off into the ether.

Thank you to NetGalley and North Star Editions for providing me this book for my honest review.

Sometimes when you read a book, it's easy to talk about what you love or hate about it and sometimes it's just plain ole' vibes. Here Lies Olive is a vibes book for me 100%.

Here Lies Olive is a YA horror story centered around a handful of teens living in the kitschy, death obsessed town of White Haven. Olive has spent the last 2 years trying to hold herself apart from everyone she knew well before dying for 5 minutes, but when an elderly woman she's grown close to passes, suddenly she's questioning everything. Where do we go after we die? Is there truly Nothing? Olive sets off on a mission to ask the dead that very question and where best to summon a ghost than the very haunted town of White Haven.

The vibes of this book were immaculate. Olive starts the novel alone, disconnected and without any clue who she is after her experiences, but needing answers. The plot brings new and old people into her life, some well meaning and others not so. I will say that the villain felt fairly obvious upon their introduction, but that by no means took away from the build up of horror and thrill.

Here Lies Olive is the perfect spooky, Fall reader for any reader young or old that loves abandoned asylums, summoning ghosts or a darker version of Halloweentown!

Thank you so much to Flux/ North Star Editions and Netgalley for the ebook to read and review

Olive had a death experience two years ago and it’s haunted her since, then her best friend Mrs. H died in her hands. Desperate to find out if death is really nothing she tries to summon the dead to ask them. She summons Jay a relative of her friends who doesn’t know where his grave is, the plan is to find it and put him to rest.

The setting for this story was amazing this small town that runs as a haunted Halloween tourist town, with many dark hidden haunting secrets. I honestly loved the setting of this book so much. The Asylum/sanatorium is literally what adds so much to this story. Asylums like the one in the book have many dark stories to tell and I really loved that this book leaned into it.

Our protagonist Olive seeks out answers after a two year struggle, after she pushed everyone away and shut herself off. She constantly fears that once she’s dead there’s literally nothing left after that. So she goes seeking out all her answers and hopes that Jay who she summons can tell her that. So that both of them can heal and move on. I liked that we went on this journey with her, she’d been haunted for so long and lost so much because of it. It was so nice that she got her answers, that she figured out how to live and not let the nothing win over her. I liked that we got to see her building the relationship back up with Davis, he was the biggest thing she lost and I was so happy reading that they reunited completely through the story.

I really loved the budding quiet romance between Olive and Maren but I wanted more, I felt like we should have been given so much more of them honestly. I really wanted them to spend that time together gardening, doing that project together like they’d mentioned. I wanted the site they found to be done together, Olive made the list. I kind of thought that we would have had that important scene between Maren and Olive, helping put everyone at rest with the respect they deserved. There was honestly so much more I feel the author could have given us between these two and their beautiful relationship.

The dark mystery around the asylum, the shades, the spirits lingering, the search for Jay’s grave and to put him at ease. The strangeness around Vanessa and her sudden arrival at the school and town, it was all really fascinating and intriguing. I found myself hooked into it all wanting to get to the bottom of it, then with the attacks on other students and the scary attacks at the outdoor theatre. It really makes your brain whir trying to figure everything out and it was such an entertaining read.

Overall this was a really good paranormal, mystery, romance, I enjoyed following the story, unlocking all the secrets and seeing Olive come out of her darkness and trying to learn to live again, to fall in love, to let her best friend back into her life.

I really enjoyed this book, it was the perfect cozy, yet spooky read for fall. The plot was solid and kept me guessing, and the slow burn romance was so cute 😍

I really liked the story line and the paranormal aspects in this book. I also respected the characters and had a good time reading it. There's a good message too the book and I didn't mind following a teen protagonist like I normally do. This was a great spooky read. I only wish it came out earlier this month so I could make all my friends read it too.

4.5 ⭐️

(Swipe for the color version of the cover - too pretty not to share!)

I absolutely devoured this book and I loved every minute of it. The story flowed incredibly well, pacing was smooth and kept you immersed in the story, and the language/writing was perfectly chosen to make this interesting and entertaining while still being very easy to consume.

I would never peg this as a debut novel if I hadn’t already known, as it feels like Kate Anderson has really found her voice and writing style. This reads like an experienced novelist, not someone just figuring out their style.

Here Lies Olive is dark and twisty and a little bit spooky, but still fun and leaves you feeling uplifted and content. A great YA novel for spooky season, but I would also recommend to the adult crowd as well who are looking for something to really drag them into an exciting plot.

I did pretty much figure out the twist (and had suspicions from pretty early on), which took away from what I assume was an intended shock factor, but I don’t think it took away from the plot itself at all to see it coming. For a YA reader, this twist may still come out as shocking and exciting, but for an adult reader I think we lost a little bit there.

Overall this was an incredible read and I have already preordered my physical copy as I expect this to be a reread next fall!

Thank you to NetGalley, Kate Anderson, and North Star Editions/Flux for the eARC!

In this paranormal book, ghost, two strange girls and ones big crush have formed an alliance to save their loved one. This was such an original premise and I enjoyed every moment of it!

I'd call this horror lite. It was creepy-ish but overall, I was underwhelmed. This is a case where I definitely should have stopped reading before the end in fairness to the author but I wanted to see if I was right about the "twist."

I tried my best to finish this, I really did. Unfortunately the problem here for me is the narrator, and the simple wattpad style of explaining every little tiny detail unnecessarily. If you told me the author was in high school I'd believe it. A fairly interesting premise, though, just poorly executed.

here lies olive — kate anderson
pub: 24 oct

sixteen-year-old olive, two years after a near-death experience involving shellfish, fears there might be Nothing after death. with this fear, she keeps people at a distance, believing that relationships inevitably only end in sorrow.

in her quest to learn about the afterlife, she summons jay, a hitchhiker ghost trapped in the woods for over a century, and agrees to help find his unmarked grave and let him rest. but when mysterious attacks in the woods start targeting olive's classmates, she teams up with her maybe-nemesis, possibly-crush maren, her ex-best friend davis, and the suspicious new girl vanessa, to save jay from becoming a "shade."

while i did like the atmospheric writing, most of my issues are with the characters and their development, especially olive. i thought her a bit shallow at times, and then she would very suddenly arrive to the right conclusions, even about her romantic interest in maren. the plot wasn't entirely predictable but I'd have expected a little more mystery~ with how it was set up. i think the presentation of a mature (taboo, even) subject of death and the grief and depression it comes with was handled well to appeal to a younger audience.

if you like YA horror or mystery, this is a good spooky fall read 👍

as always thank you to netgalley, the author, and publisher north star editions and flux!

In short, takes readers on an emotional rollercoaster through death, friendship, and the mysteries of the afterlife.

Olive Morana, our angst-ridden protagonist, is irresistibly relatable. After a near-death experience, she's haunted by the fear of a bleak afterlife, but her journey to uncover the truth is both heartwarming and spooky. The story unfolds in a quirky New Mexican town with a fascination for the supernatural, providing an ideal backdrop for Halloween enthusiasts.

Anderson crafts a captivating narrative that blends elements of ghost stories, mystery, and soul-searching. As Olive confronts her fears and unravels the secrets of her town, she rekindles lost friendships and discovers the unexpected beauty in life's imperfections.

While the romance may evolve at a slower pace than some would prefer, Olive's journey toward understanding death and embracing love is both tender and genuine.

This book is a delightful YA horror novel that embraces themes of friendship, found family, and the enigmatic realm beyond life. Perfect for Halloween reading, it will tug at your heartstrings and leave you pondering the mysteries of existence.

1/5 Stars

TL;DR - Long, overdrawn, and ultimately underwhelming. A one-dimensional protagonist who acts both too young and too old for her age, a nearly non-existent plot, and a laughably cliche and underwhelming conclusion. I should have stopped at like 30%, but it became a hate-read, and now I, too, want to find out if there’s an afterlife.

Big thanks to North Star Editions, Flux, and NetGalley for providing the ARC for this book in exchange for an honest review!

***Trigger warnings for: death, PTSD, death of a loved one, divorce, mentions of living in a sanitarium/asylum, mentions of murder, mentions of child sex trafficking, attempted murder, serious harm inflicted by a knife/blade, blood, and disability after violence.***

‘Here Lies Olive’ by Kate Anderson is a YA “horror” book that follows the story of Olive, a 16 year old who has a near-death experience and becomes obsessed with the possibility that there might not be an afterlife. She decides to summon a ghost to find out the truth, and everything goes awry from there. She has to navigate this haunting, as well as her own trauma, drama between friends, and her growing attraction to her lifelong rival, a girl named Meren.

Sounds cool, right? It’s not. It is, most assuredly, not.

(Spoiler, the only good thing about this book is that it features sapphic characters and a prominent guy-girl platonic friendship. That’s it, end of list.)

I straight up did not enjoy this book. As I said in the TL;DR, I should have stopped at ~30% when I realized that this book had all the emotional depth of spilled milk and all the subtlety of a stampeding elephant, but it morphed into a hate-read that I couldn’t put down because it was just so bad. I’m legitimately angry at this book for being so bad, and at myself for not sparing myself the migraine and the lost hours of my life.

I don’t even know where to begin, kind of like how this book doesn’t know where to stop. Everything is so laboriously over-explained, and so much is told instead of shown. Endless details about things that don’t matter and never-ending trivia about death-related things, none of which added anything but pages to the narrative. 100+ pages could have been shaved off of this if Olive and the author had just shut up. Purple prose to no end - there are a lot of lines where I asked myself, out loud, “What does that even mean?”, and nope, I still don’t know. So much melodrama and yet no discernible emotional depth.

And the repetition, y’all. The same basic ideas repeated over and over and over with just slightly varied wording. I get it, Olive is sad and afraid of death. Bad things are bad, everything’s her fault. Just beating us over the head with long-winded purple prose, telling us exactly how we should feel and exactly what’s going on with no room to breathe. All these “big emotional moments” are just the same stuff over and over in excruciatingly heavy-handed detail, that in no way seems either realistic or relatable. Just the author holding your hand and over-explaining like you’ve never felt a single emotion in your life and you desperately need three whole pages to deal with a single shallow outline of a feeling. This book actively gave me anxiety because of how much the author feels I need to know every single thought that goes through Olive’s head.

(From my notes: If I have to read the phrase “Maren effing Seymour” one more effing time, I will find out quickly if there’s an afterlife. And if I have to read one more description of bare, “spooky” trees, I will return from said afterlife and actively haunt the author for making me read it approximately seven billion times.)

Speaking of Olive. She is a one-dimensional cartoon caricature of a teenager, and yet, I do not believe for one second this girl is sixteen. She is entirely too self-aware to be realistic, and is, inexplicably, also dumb as a bag of rocks, and that’s being generous. She spends so much time psychoanalyzing everyone and knowing exactly why everyone does everything they do, knows all of their deep dark personal failings, can spot trauma and maladaptive coping mechanisms from a mile away, and yet…never once thinks maybe she’s the one who needs therapy for ACTUALLY DYING. She admits (laments, really, and repeatedly) that she’s “so broken” but never actually does anything to remedy that? No attempt at personal growth, no processing of the trauma she endured except in ham-fisted “revelations” that are apropos of nothing. No, no, don’t go to therapy, just get a girlfriend and all your trauma is gone! Her grandiose introspection sounds like a 30+ year old who’s had years of therapy to understand the trauma she went through, not a 16 year old with no mentioned psych help. I don’t think the words “therapy” or “mental health” are ever mentioned in this book, but I sure need to talk to my counselor after the psychological torture that was the experience of reading this.

(Olive’s also not like other girls, you see, because she’s a GOTH who wears DARK LIPSTICK and DOC MARTENS and is OBSESSED WITH DEATH…in the self-proclaimed “dark tourism capital of the United States” where literally everyone in town is obsessed with death. Yeah, okay, sure.)

Which brings me to her parents. They just willfully ignore that their daughter made a complete 180 in terms of personality and engagement in life after she was literally dead for five minutes, and they just go, “Oh, teenagers are so quirky!”. Like, the fuck? Girl is depressed and clearly has PTSD. Doesn’t do her homework, skips school, ghosts her lifelong best friend, yeah cool, all normal and not at all indicative of mental health issues. Not even after she witnesses the death of her adoptive grandmother do they try to get her some counseling. Olive literally breaks down and tells them about what happened when she died and how it affected her, and they’re just…completely and utterly shocked. They “didn’t think about what it meant for [her] emotionally”…excuse me? And then, yep, no therapy! A+ parenting, no notes.

(I can see why Olive is so stupid, her parents are clearly not possessed of any brains or common sense whatsoever.)

Plot, next to non-existent. Horror, none; supernatural elements, the bare minimum. Brains in these kids, definitely not a one. 35% of the book spent angsting about what’s going to happen to the ghost boy, and yet doing nothing at all to find the MacGuffin to avoid said fate. Obvious foreshadowing and plot twists, a clear progression of cause to effect, and Olive and her friends are just, completely bewildered and make the dumbest decisions possible. As other reviewers have said, this absolutely reads more like middle-grade than YA in terms of complexity (or lack thereof) and the simplicity of the writing. Except weirdly interspersed with the aforementioned late 20s therapy talk.

(Except I wouldn’t recommend this at all to actual teenagers because the mental health rep is just so bad. Not at all a good example for young people to draw from.)

The villain is obvious, and trite, and they even get an entire cliche villain monologue. Neat! And the entire climax is maybe five pages and, I shit you not, is resolved with the power of love. Pure garbage.

And then. AND THEN. The author has the gall to acknowledge the Navajo Nation in her author’s note when one of the only three BIPOC characters in this book (all three of whom are Navajo), ends up mind-controlled and violently assaulted by a white woman, which culminates in him almost dying and being permanently disabled by the attack. Not to mention Olive calling the land on which the haunted house is built a white character’s “ancestral land”, when earlier in the book, she acknowledges that the land was stolen from the Navajo and they were “pushed out”. Yeah, okay, sure. Everyone cares an awful lot about the dead white boy on the property, but no one bats an eye about the Native lives likely lost there. Writing such poor Native rep (and I struggle to call it even that) and then tossing a last-minute mention to the people she spent the book brutalizing and erasing the history of just does not sit well with me at all. I don't understand how this all got past her Navajo sensitivity reader, but hey, here we are.

Final Thoughts:

This could have been a really powerful story about trauma and depression and mortality and death, but instead it’s just a bloated, mediocre “love story” with a dash of nonsensical paranormal flavor. Deleting it off my Kindle and going to find that promised afterlife.

My thanks for the ARC goes to NetGalley and North Star Editions, Flux. I'm voluntarily leaving a review.

Genre: Paranormal, Horror
Age Group: Young adults
Representation: LGBTQ, different races (including indigenous people!), and the dead
Spice Level: Medium (sex mentioned but scenes are not on the page and kissing)
Language: High—there's about every work in the book here (nothing that they won't hear in high school)
Substance Use: Drinking

I loved how the themes of horror are immediately seen. We also know exactly what has caused Olive to feel worried about death and her goal to figure out what is on the other side.

This is a fast-paced novel that stays true to its beginning. There are paranormal elements throughout—and an intriguing mystery that must get solved.

This is not my preferred genre, so I don't know how the horror aspect lives up to YA horror, but I thought it was good. I also liked how it leaned into urban myths, and I liked the resolution—it was satisfying.

The only reason I'm marking it down one star is because of the language—yes, it's might be realistic, but I just don't enjoy reading it. I'd like to see more fiction that relies on the great writing than on language for the impact, and I feel like HERE LIES OLIVE is well-written and stands on its own.

I hope you enjoy this book too.

Happy (haunted) reading!

Absolutely loved how spooky and atmospheric 'Here Lies Olive' is. Had a great time reading this book, and I am definitely looking forward to more from this author!

Where do I even begin?! I mean, this kicked October off with a bang.

We’ve got our MC Olive, who has experienced a great deal of death in her young life. After a terrible allergic reaction, her heart stopped for a full 5 minutes before she was brought back to life. She also experienced an elderly woman she befriended pass away as she held her hand in her final moments.

These events only leave Olive feeling more alone and wanting to learn more about what happens when someone passes. So she decides to hold a seance in the most haunted house in town. In an attempt to reach her friend and finally have her questions answered, she awakens someone else in the process and starts a terrifying and gruesome chain of events.

This book is visceral, it’s haunting, and best of all, it’s got an ending no one saw coming. Could not recommend this book enough and will definitely be picking it up when it releases on 10/24/23.

Thank you to NetGalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review. I will be posting this same review to Goodreads as well.

Thank you to NetGalley and Flux for giving me an eARC of this title in exchange for an honest review!

Truthfully, I don’t have a lot of feedback to give on this title. There was nothing wrong with it, it was a perfectly fine book. But, despite being initially drawn in by the premise, I was let down by the plot. It was really just… fine. I wasn’t “wowed” and I wasn’t appalled, it was just perfectly okay.

It took me quite a bit to get through this book, for a number of reasons, but not the least of which was that I just wasn’t drawn in. I didn’t find the characters all that compelling, and therefore wasn’t all that interested in their journeys. Olive’s whole thing is that she’s trying to search for meaning in life after her brush with the Nothing waiting for us after death, but it honestly didn’t really feel that urgent or dramatic to me? Maybe it was because we were already two years out from her NDE, or that the book cements us so early on in a town where death is a common theme, but death and dying just really didn’t seem like a big deal— especially when there are so obviously ghosts.

I don’t know, this was a tough one for me. I definitely didn’t dislike it, but reading it kind of felt like trying to put together a puzzle made out of only middle pieces— it’s just not going to work.