I received a copy of this from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I love a good YA horror, especially this time of year when the season is changing. The premise of this book sucked me right in because it is terrifying to be trapped anywhere. I was especially intrigued because this centered on best friends, one boy and one girl. I love friendship books and it is very rare to see opposite gender best friends.

However, this book could not have felt "horrifying". Where the things encountered in the maze supposed to be scary? Yes. Did the characters act scared once? Maybe just once. Even when faced with their own deaths it felt like they just didn't have emotions to match the situation. They literally saw their own dead bodies and it felt very surface level the way they reacted. I love a good visceral horror book that makes me a bit scared but I felt nothing reading this.

It may be because I just had rewatched 'In the Tall Grass', but this also felt like a YA spin on the same exact story. People enter a field and encounter their own dead bodies, with one individual seeming to know and understand the rules of the place. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't watched that movie.

Overall, I would probably recommend it to a younger YA audience, or perhaps a middle grade individual wanting to explore the YA genre.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
I haven’t read Sarah Hollowell before, but after reading What Stalks Among Us, I’m definitely interested in reading more from her. I went in knowing very little beyond what is in the blurb, and I recommend that as well for the full experience, beyond perhaps looking at content warnings, as it does deal with some sensitive topics. But I appreciated how these were handled, particularly how it represents the cycle of abuse and trauma.
With the presence of a literal corn maze, I love how it represents the complex mystery that the characters must unravel. Things did not go in the direction I expected when I started the book, and there were many twists and turns, and a few poignant revelations. The narrative was fast-paced, sucking me in and making me savor every bit.
The characters were also pretty great. I was already drawn to the fact that the protagonist, Sadie, is fat and neurodivergent, which is a rarity in thriller and horror. I loved seeing such a nuanced portrayal here, with her being allowed to have flaws and fears, while also being pretty tough as she battles the varied horrors that she and Logan are confronted with. Logan was great in the supporting role for Sadie, providing moral support when she needed it.
This is a wonderfully creepy read, and perfect with Halloween coming up next month. I recommend it to readers who enjoy YA thriller/horror, especially if they’re looking for something with a bit more diversity than the norm.

Thank you to HarperCollins Children's Books and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of "What Stalks Among Us" by Sarah Hollowell in exchange for an honest review.

Holy mackerel, I hardly know where to start.

Sadie and Logan are best friends. Their relationship is bone deep, despite being less than a year old. They decide to skip their physics class field trip to the amusement park and drive aimlessly around the countryside. When they see a seemingly-impossible corn maze (it's a fully grown, mature corn maze in May), they pull over and decide to start exploring.

It does not take long to understand that this is a serious mistake. They are immediately lost, unable to retrace their steps back to the beginning and then... then they find the first body. The boy is identical to Logan in every way (except he's still alive and the boy definitely is not). What follow is the wild, unnerving story of their attempts to escape the corn maze.

There is so much to unpack in "What Stalks Among Us.". Like the very best horror, this story is about more than just about it's plot. Yes, it's about two teens trying to escape a corn maze. But it's also about the effects of fatphobia, emotional abuse, toxic relationships (both romantic and platonic), vengeance, and redemption. It doesn't seem like all that should fit squarely within the realm of a haunted corn maze, and yet... It totally does. If the maze can defy the bounds of time and space (which is does, constantly), it can shift enough to include extraordinary emotional reckoning.

The very best part of the story is the bond between Sadie and Logan. As unnerving as the story is, their friendship brings lightness and hope. They support one another. They trust each other. They never let the other give up. The story says "No Sadie without Logan. No Logan without Sadie." No matter what happens, they are a team and I loved them for it.

It was a little slow going at first, but after the first 10%, I tore through it. It was "staying up too late to read more" kinda book. I recommend it to those who enjoy YA horror, corn maze fans, and folks who like their horror with a heavy dose of emotional resolution. However, there are many triggers in this book, so go carefully. In particular, be aware that abusive relationships (NOT between Sadie and Logan, thank goodness) form the nucleus of the tale.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review!

Sadie and Logan skip their end-of-year field trip and as they are driving around the backroads of Indiana they find a corn maze. It isn't long before they come across corpses of themselves and realize that they are stuck in a time loop.

I was expecting a typical YA horror, what I got was so much more! The vibe was super creepy and the story was so fast paced and exciting. It is a beautiful story of friendship and the characters are so great (I've never related to a character more than when Logan was worrying about his cat as he is stuck in a murder filled mystery corn maze). I also loved how the author talked about dealing with trauma. I never expected when I started reading this, that it would make me so emotional. There are some definite trigger warnings, but I don't want to give away too much so I will just leave it at that.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

3.5 stars. I wasn’t sure where this story was going to go, but all in all I enjoyed the journey.

Sadie and Logan are best friends joined at the hip. They’ve only been friends for a year, but Sadie can’t see her life without him anymore. After Logan suggest they skip the school field trip and go riding around, they stumble upon a corn maze. Once they enter, they aren’t allowed to leave. Not only can they not leave, but they find bodies in the maze. Bodies of themselves. What does it all mean? What unfolds is a mystery where Sadie and Logan have to figure out the root of the Maze’s origins while also figuring out a way to set free all the unfortunate souls trapped inside.

I’m not a huge fan of time loops for the repetitiveness, but I thought this one was done very well. I liked the focus on body positivity and healing your trauma. Both Sadie and Logan had things they had to work out and Sadie was finally able to open up to Logan about the issues with her ex boyfriend and ex best friends. There was no Sadie without Logan and no Logan without Sadie.

Usually I get annoyed with pop culture references in books, but I thought the ones here were funny and fit in the moment, especially with Sadie’s ADHD. I appreciated the queer rep with them too.

If you like slow burn horror mystery I recommend this one. It’s very funny and touching and I really liked the ending.

A wonderful read. I enjoyed this very much. This author has a way with words
Highly recommend
10/10

I got an ARC of this book.

I started recommending this book to people by 30%. At 50% I was posting about it on library pages and spreading. By 80% I was texting everyone my reactions pretty much page by page. By 100% I feel so many feelings.

There are literally no bad things that I can say about this book. So onto the good. The MC is a fat bi girl dealing with lots of emotions. She lost her two closest friends, but the reason why isn’t made fully clear until further into the book. She is dealing with her break-up, but in more ways than are clear at first. This is really a great book when it comes to the complex emotions around abusive partners. When you break up, the feelings don’t just go away. You can miss your abuser, even if you know what they were doing wasn’t ok. You can miss the way they made you feel when things were good. You could miss so many things. It doesn’t make the abuser better, it doesn’t mean there was less abuse or no abuse. I love how this book also tackles that friends can be toxic, not just romantic partners.

The plot! The setting! The villain(s?)! SO MUCH WONDERFUL. I just don’t even know how to talk about the book without giving big twists away and without just gushing the whole time. It was just yes. So much yes. I was worried a bit that the repeating the maze would get tedious or I would lose track of time loops, but it really wasn’t difficult to follow. The characters don’t remember everything either, so missing a detail here or there doesn’t really change how the book progresses. The important things are repeated in ways that don’t drag down the story and kept me caught up. It was really well done and well paced.

One of the best books I have read this year, without a doubt.

Thanks to NetGalley for this one. I enjoyed this YA horror immensely...after a while. For me it was a bit of a slow starter and it took a few time loops to get into it. The premise is both simple and complex at the same time. Sadie (who's first person point of view we're in) and her bestie Logan decide to play hookey from the school field trip to the amusement park and end up in a strange corn maze because that's an October thing and it's early spring when they find it.

This is a hard one to review without spoiling things so I'll keep it to the blurb. The maze functions almost like a video game where it resets itself and Sadie and Logan have to fight to keep their memories of the previous time loop because they've found their own dead bodies and if they keep dying they know they'll never get out of the loop. The maze has more secrets than that but those are best left to the reader to discover on their own.They're worth it. As a content warning there is a crap ton about abusive relationships and domestic violence in this. Most of it is not on page but it is discussed a lot. The resolution of the story felt right and was satisfying (because it would have been easy to go off the rails on this one)

Sadie and Logan are good characters with a lot to like about them but I did have a few problems so I can talk about that without spoilers. For one, Logan doesn't feel like a truly formed character in some ways. Maybe it's because it's in first person pov or that there is a sameness to them. Both he and Sadie are ADHD, anxious and bisexual. The major difference is Sadie is an overweight girl and Logan is an Asian/Caucasian male. But there is so much the same that it feels like Logan isn't entirely his own man. True many of our friends are very much like ourselves but in ways Logan felt like his only role was to be Sadie's bestie and to validate all her feelings which seems to be Logan's main function. I wish he had a louder voice in this because No Sadie without Logan/No Logan without Sadie was repeated ad nauseum in this and I wanted Logan to have a few more quirks to call his own.

The other issue for me is Sadie herself and this is dangerous ground to tread on because the author's note says how much of herself is in this. As for me the reader/reviewer, I too am an overweight woman with anxiety and ADHD and we're in the your mileage may vary territory. Most of Sadie's thoughts are about how fat and anxious she is and how much she wished she was more fat positive like her cousin. You know what, fine, that absolutely needs addressed. But that seems to be the end all be all of Sadie and yes, I know that there are overweight women out there who might spend all day every day thinking about it.

I personally don't. And it's in every chapter. It's every few pages. Some of it is the repetitiveness of the early time loop stuff. But Sadie never really moves beyond that. It's her main thought right after how do we get out of this maze. Her weight issues and the anxiety from them play into the abusive relationship as well. Don't get me wrong, some of that is needed. It helps shine a light on what people go through being that overweight. On the other than, she exhausted me because that's about all she seems to think about. It wasn't a deal breaker for the story but I really wished there had been more to her than that because about the only other things i remember about her is she thought she was good at mazes and she lost her friendships over her gas lighting emotionally abusive boyfriend.

The last compliant is to be taken with a grain of salt because I know from first hand experience how little an author has input on covers. I barely recognized Sadie was overweight from that cover. Her own description has her unable to sit in chairs with arms and the reason for not going to the amusement park is she's too fat for the rides. I know how big I am (bigger than the girl on the cover) and I fit in chairs/rides so I can guess how big Sadie must be and it was a disappointment the publisher didn't use cover art with a truly obese character on the cover (especially when we have books like the Faith Herbert series out there with an obvious plus sized protagonist)

I received a free copy of this book thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins; all opinions are my own.

Fantastic read, with more depth than one might initially think. Hollowell does a great job of letting us see Sadie's mind while keeping the action moving. Highly recommend this as a YA thriller with a soul!

What a stunning, creepy, unsettling book. What Stalks Among Us drops the reader directly into the action with very little preamble and never lets up from there. Fast pacing, engaging characters, and a mystery that isn't afraid to keep asking questions and changing expectations. I was genuinely unsettled by the narrative.

Though this starts as a creepy corn horror novel (and very much is that throughout), it is also a complex look at grief, trauma, and anxiety. I don't want to say anything that will spoil it, but the way these themes are woven together is something I will be thinking about for a long time.

This is also a perfect example of excellent representation - queer, fat, race, metal health. These characters exist fully within their identity and it affects who they are, but without the sledgehammer of representation that we sometimes get. The conversations and mentions that they make about their identities feel incredibly realistic in their casualness, while also indicating how intwined these features are with their identities.

Sadie and Logan are best friends in high school and decide to ditch their end of the year fieldtrip in favor of taking a short road trip together. When taking a backroad, they stumble across a giant corn maze, which is odd as it’s much too early in the year for fully grown corn. What starts off as a fun adventure turns disconcerting as they begin to find evidence that they may have been in this maze before. And then they stumble across people that appear to have been killed intentionally. They realize they have no clue how to leave the maze, and no idea who is hunting them or why – will they be able to survive?

I really wasn’t sure where this book was going to go, but I liked where the author took it. I was a little concerned when the time-loop aspect began as it can get repetitive and drag depending on how it’s approached. But the author did a decent job with balancing the repetition with incorporating new information. There were some points that got a little dull due to the repetition, but it didn’t happen too often. Not to mention that there were some odd and unsettling aspects incorporated seamlessly, and the setting is a seemingly endless corn maze. The setting and these aspects highlighted the author’s creativity and made for a unique read.

I liked the two main characters. They felt like real people, had compelling personalities, and I enjoyed the personal struggles that the protagonist had. I did find the secondary characters to be a little lacking; they never came alive for me, which did end up detracting from some of the suspense/tension that could have been incorporated.

This is an odd read that I have mixed feelings about but was so unique and weird that I had a difficult time putting it down. If you enjoy YA slow burn horror, then you’ll likely enjoy this one. My thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins for allowing me to read this work, which will be published September 12, 2023. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This book took me for a loop and I am gonna re-read this during Halloween. Lol I think I’m gonna scare myself during this time. But this was wonderful written, drained me in from the get go and oh so creepy. I highly recommend.

This was such a weird and twisty story. I'm not sure I ultimately loved everything that happened but I also could not put this down simply because I needed to understand what was happening. This story was so confusing and bizarre. The idea is definitely interesting but there were also a lot of strange events that didn't end up feeling resolved in the end and I'm confused as to what those things meant if they weren't important reveals for the ending of the story. I think I just would have wished for a little more in the story and also a lot of parts ended up feeling too repetitive by the end but that might just be part of things that are any way related to time looping.

Creepy, time-loopy, mysterious and tense. Fast-paced with a great plot. But what I loved even more were the characters!

Fantastic character development. Diverse characters. And... Yes! This one had me silently cheering. Finally, a plus-sized heroine whose weight isn't addressed as a one-line aside. Hollowell really delves into the trauma and prejudices that many overweight people face. So relatable and well done.

I know this one will stick with me for a long time.

This book was scary, confusing, and so damn good. This book took me on a wild ride and I didn't want to see it end.

3.5? 3.75?

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this ARC!

So this is my first book by this author, but her debut has been on my TBR for a long time, and I just haven’t been able to get a copy of it. So I was really excited when I was approved for this ARC, and I’m happy to say that I really enjoyed the book! (and I’m definitely going to find a copy of her other one). For me, YA thrillers/mysteries/horrors often fall flat, because I find that they don’t balance tension and emotion that well, and the pacing becomes off as a result. But I was really impressed with this one, because while I do think the pacing intention, go off track a little bit at parts, it never lessened my enjoyment of the novel. I adored both of the main characters, and I thought the work done with the side characters was also really well done. I also feel like this is a book that I will probably think about for quite a while because it just seems that it’s going to have that lasting impact on me.

Also, I loved the way this is a love letter to the Midwest, both in a positive and negative way. We don’t see a lot of Midwest environments in books, especially ones that feel warm and true-to-life, so I enjoyed that.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I mean, you've got a corn maze that keeps changing, you've got dead bodies (some of which are our main characters'), you've got creatures, and an overall creepiness that you just can't shake. There's even a jump scare, which my readerly brain absolutely loves. What more could a girl want?

Well, whatever it is, this book probably has you covered, because...

Bisexuality rep? Check. Fat heroine rep? Check. ADHD (and maybe audhd) rep? Check. Heavy metaphors for emotional trauma and healing? Oh yeah, you better believe it, check!

Also, if there's anyone out there who likes Cube (the series of sci-fi horror movies), this has a very similar feel, so seriously... Read it. Read. It. Now.

I honestly do not have any complaints. From start to finish, this book wouldn't leave me alone. I felt anxious every time I put it down. I couldn't even sleep. I wound up finishing it in a DAY. This is unheard of for me. I haven't finished a book in a day in years! Needless to say, I fully plan on reading more by Sarah Hollowell, if this kind of read is what I have to look forward to.

To end this, I have changed my mind. I do not merely recommend this. Instead, I implore you, shamelessly beg you, to read this book. I need you to read this book. I need everyone to read this book, because I need the author to write more books. I need everyone to meet Sadie and love her as much as I do.

Despite wanting everyone to read this, I also want everyone to be forewarned about the contents, so...

Content Warnings for: abuse (physical and emotional/psychological), mention/threat of suicide, one scene of graphic self-harm/cutting, other (very minor) self-harming throughout, lots of blood, gaslighting, abandonment, murder/death, broken bones, mention of missing teeth, scars, mention of miscarriage.

I just finished reading What Stalks Among Us and couldn't put it down! The suspense and horror had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good scare this Halloween season . Sarah has done it again. Her debut book, A Dark and Starless Night, had me wary of walks through the woods. Now with this story, I am declaring her Queen of Plant Horror.

I was so excited to get approved for an ARC of What Stalks Among Us because Sarah Hollowell is local to my area and I love supporting local authors, but... I was not expecting to be as obsessed with this novel as I am! It was easy to get immersed in the book and lose track of time. I cannot wait to get my hands on a physical copy!

Best friends, Sadie and Logan, decide to skip the end-of-year trip in favor of cruising the Indiana backroads. The duo is shocked when they come across an impossible cornfield towering tall in May (knee high by the fourth of July, is a common Hoosier saying). Not only is it impossibly high for the time of year, but a corn maze cuts right through it. So the two curious teens enter and quickly realize that the maze is unlike any they've done before. Unable to leave, the maze shuffles them through increasingly odd "rooms" as they find that they've been there before... many times, and something it hunting them.

No more is being said about this book on my end other than that it is such a fantastic read, a horror novel with a surprising and welcome theme that I am not going to spoil!

I ended up, not quite enjoying this book. I had high hopes for it, and I have read book by the author before, so I hoped to enjoy this one. I will check out more from this author in the future, however.