The Farrow women are cursed. They see more than one time, bleeding into each other until they go mad. June thinks that is what is happening to her when her beloved Gran passes away, but the reality of her situation is even more complicated than she thought.

I loved this fantasy - June is a beautifully stubborn character and her family members are so interesting. Their situation is complicated and the solution is fraught, but the desperate desire to save their future is so clear in June's actions. This book is going to lead to great book club discussions.

Thank you to Random House and Netgalley for my eARC.

Go into this knowing there's some magical realism mixed with a mystery and family drama and you are good! I don't think you need or want to know a whole lot to get the most out of it.

This book was so beautifully done! A perfect seasonal book. The mystery was not the center point of the book but also gave the reader a sense of interest and urgency. The magical element was small, yet huge. The element itself was necessary for the format of this book and it was so well used. It wasn't over the top and could perhaps...just perhaps actually happen. The family aspect really kept this book connected in a very creative way. I'm still reeling how she handled those strands.

I read this in 24 hours and was completely immersed by this story. An easy book to recommend to everyone.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine for the advance e-copy of this book.

Beautiful and heartbreaking. This one will stick with me for a while. Love being surprised by authors I've read in other genres.

June Farrow knows the Farrow women are different, but as she buries her grandmother the vision’s becomes worse. As her world splits in two she goes searching for answers about her mother who abandoned her as a baby and she ends up going through a door, and on the other side she’s in 1951 in a life she doesn’t remember. Now desperately searching for answers she continues to try to find a way home realizing she will have to make a decision when the door reappears to stay or go. I read this in one day. I couldn’t put it down. Amazingly written and exciting I loved every minute of it.

The Unmaking of June Farrow may be my favorite book of the year. We follow June in her life with her flower farm and her family.

In true Adrienne Young fashion, we’re taken on a roller coaster, and I didn’t want for it to ever stop. Her beautiful writing and unique ideas pull at heartstrings (and kept me up late reading). I’ve read a few of her books so far and will continue to pick them up. I’d recommend it and would buy it for myself and my friends. I can see myself rereading this book.

After loving Spells for Forgetting last year, I was incredibly excited to get the arc of The Unmaking of June Farrow. This book was everything I thought it would be and more!

This book started a little slow for me but once I the time travel started I became fully invested. I loved the aspects of time travel in the book although at some points I had to think really hard to figure out how it all worked. The twists kept coming and I wanted to keep reading to try to figure out what was going on.

I love the author’s writing so much. You really feel the place come to life and I love all of the characters. It was just so well done.

This book has all the fall vibes so go get it when it comes out October 17!

Thank you netgalley for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

The Farrow women have a history of sickness. Their minds slowly leave reality before they leave forever. June is determined to stop the cycle by never marrying or having children. In her 30s, when the sickness starts, it sets off a chain of events that June cannot explain. It’s a mystery and June must collect clues left for her to figure out what really happens to the Farrow women.

This book is written in the same beautiful prose that Adrienne Young always delivers. It’s set in a small farming town near Asheville, North Carolina. I always feel a special kinship with books set in NC, as that’s where I live. The Farrow women have passed down a renown flower farm through the generations, and honestly I could have used even more flower farm imagery than what was in the book.

The story is trippy. It’s hard to follow, but even the characters admit how much they struggle coming to grips with the explanations for what is happening. The explanation feels so simple and so complex at the same time, and even with two chapters left I couldn’t predict how the book would end.

This book almost felt like a sweet fairy tale for those with loved ones who suffer from dementia. It also reminded me of some of my favorite aspects of the Outlander story, which is one of my favorite series. I always look forward to Adrienne Young books and the beautiful way she sees the world.

Anything Adrienne writes is perfection!
I will always recommend what she writes without question, she takes you into worlds you never want to leave.
10/10 always.

I’m convinced that Adrienne Young could publish her grocery list and I would happily gobble it up. I love the worlds she builds and the connections between her characters. This book was one of my top reads of the year and I just could NOT put it down.

June lives a quiet life on her family's flower farm in North Carolina, that is until her Grandmother passes and leaves her a clue to unlock her whole past and discover her future alternate life. The Farrow women are cursed to go mad as they age, but June discovers that the madness is linked to their ability to travel through time to a parallel life. As June learns more about her mother and her past, she travels back in time to her alternate reality to uncover the mystery of her parent's death and embark on her own love story.

This book was so unexpected, I wasn't a fan of Spells for Forgetting but this book was way more interesting! It was a unique mix of romance and mystery that gave me Time Traveler's WIfe and Addie Larue vibes. One of my favorite reads of the year.

Wow! I haven’t been this sucked into a book in so long. The writing gave me the same feeling I had when reading Where the Crawdads Sing! The twists and turns and the atmospheric writing had me feeling so much! June's journey to find, not only herself, but clues to solve the curse had me on the edge of my seat. I loved this book so much! Adrienne Young continues to be a favorite author of mine!

This was my first Adrienne Young and I truly enjoyed it.

The unmaking of June Farrow was such an interesting read that I went into blind and think everyone should! The main plot withhold spoiling the best twists and turns is June Farrow is from a line of women who lose their sense of reality as they age. June doesn’t want to add to her family line and doom her children to that fate. On a journey to find out more about her mother, she uncovers how her family story is entwined with the towns biggest mystery. This is a story of love, sacrifice, insanity.

Because this is mostly a mystery book, I wanted a little more reveal or excitement in the beginning. The book didn’t grab hold of me until 30-40 percent. Once this book starts unraveling, it gets so good! I did get a good cry and Young definitely pulls on your heart strings. I loved the complex mystery in this book and finally understanding the deep layers of June Farrow’s story!

This has got to be one of the most atmospheric, beautifully detailed stories I've ever read. I could see it. I could hear it and I could feel it. I was so excited when I got this ARC because I've loved everything I've read that Adrienne Young has written and I knew this would be the same.

In the small, one stop light town of Jasper, North Carolina, June Farrow tries to not become like all of the other whispered about Farrow women, her family. Her Gran who raised her recently passed, succumbing to the visions that all her ancestors have before moving on. Now, June must face the reality that all that she thinks she knows about the Farrow curse might be completely wrong. These visions she's been having may not be the beginning of the end of her story, but they may be the beginning of something bigger. Maybe it's not so much a curse on the Farrow women, but a gift of time.

I fear that anything more I say about this will give away too much about the story and I wouldn't want anyone to go in having any preconceived notions. I will say that I loved this story and that maternal love that was constantly present really resonated with me.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This was amazing. The writing was superb, it was atmospheric and whimsical. The cast of characters were so lovable and rich. I truly loved this book

June Farrow, like the other women in her family, is cursed to go mad, and she's determined to manage it as best she can. As her beloved grandmother passes away, her hallucinations begin in earnest and her reality starts to blur. That's how The Unmaking of June Farrow begins, but I couldn't have guessed where it would go from there. Adrienne Young weaves a few mysteries - the curse, the fate of her long-lost mother, the death of a local minister many decades before - together with a story of family and finding oneself with a dash of romance. The North Carolina small town is a great setting, rich in atmosphere and parallels between 1951 and 2022, and the Farrow women are a tight-knit, interesting group. While the romance isn't the leading thread of the story, Eamon really creeps into both June's heart and the reader's as he starts to connect with her and reconcile what has happened previously.

The mystery of the curse and how Young would resolve it keep you guessing even as some of the mystery is predictable, but I still wondered how we would get there and, ultimately, the story would end for June. It's a twisty type of time travel and timelines that made my brain hurt a bit, but Young makes it clear enough and not too absurd to follow as these stories can feel., and I hardly cared by the end how to justify the curse's existence. It's rooted in family, legacy, and survival and goes beyond the basic idea of time travel. I really love these adult standalones by Adrienne Young, with her balance of light fantasy, cryptic mystery, and strong atmosphere.

June comes from a line of Farrow women who are all fated to experience hallucinations and madness as they age - and June has been seeing a man on her doorstep and a red door in the fields for the past year. Beyond that I believe it’s best to go into this story blind.

I first fell in love with Young’s atmospheric settings and strong women characters with Spells for Forgetting. In The Unmaking of June Farrow she doubles down on the murder mystery and continues to have a strong plot line of magical realism. This story has quite a few twists and turns that I enjoyed, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around how some of it worked.

This was an incredibly fast, most easy read for me (the prose is great, the content tripped me up a little bit). It’s really enjoyable for what it is. Even though it’s not quite the fall, spooky season read that Spells for Forgetting is, it’s lovely for a year-round read.

4⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and Delacorte Press for the ARC; I’m leaving this review voluntarily. I will be posting my review to Goodreads now and to Instagram on 16 October 2023.

Honestly going into the book I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when reading about June and her small boring town and her life in a flower farm. But Adrienne Young never seems to disappoint with her writings. She’s quickly becoming one of my instant buy authors. I absolutely loved this entire story through and through.

June Farrow just lost her Gran and is feeling more lost then ever because she knows the curse that hazings the Farrow women is coming for her. It took her mom and her grandmother along with all the other women who had come before her. She starts hallucinating not sure if what she is seeing is real or just her mind slowly falling away from her. Then one night while following a feeling she sees the red door. & once through it, her life is forever changed.

I would absolutely recommend this book to any romantic fantasy lovers. It was such a good and easy read. I can’t wait to order a copy for my shelf.

This is a book that will sink its claws into you and make it impossible to put down or forget about when it’s over. Adrienne Young is a master storyteller and this book is no different, as she weaves together decades of Farrow women, focusing on June and the disappearance of her mother. The way that it all unravels had me on the edge and was left with my jaw dropped trying to put all these pieces together. And when they do I gasped the biggest gasp and was also like what?! (In the best way) The mystery in this was phenomenal and I loved the small fantasy/magical realism incorporated into it. It just elevated the story to the next level!

Overall, this is an amazing book and I highly recommend you read it when it’s released!

Read if you like…
•magical realism
•decades old mystery
•strong and complex family relationships
•small town setting

Thanks to the publisher for the eARC.
This will easily be in my top books of the year. Young has created such an intricate world here, and I loved how deeply we are put into it almost right away. The mysteries happening and how they built on one another were so intricate and fascinating. I didn't find this hard to follow at all. And the characters. Oh, June. I loved getting to know her and her resolve, even when life felt like her life was falling apart. She was easy to root for. I also loved the generational story of these different women and what happened to them. Young has created such a unique premise that is cohesive and yet so unique for each woman. I don't want to say too much because I think this is a book best enjoyed without prior knowledge but know its full of heart and frustration and love and confusion and it all came together so beautifully.

June Farrow grew up knowing all the Farrow women are cursed to lose their minds. It's not a matter of if, but when. When she begins to hear voices and see things that can't be explained, a red door appears. The door appears at random until June finally steps through. On the other side, she finds herself in the past where a life she doesn't remember exists filled with people who know and remember her. As memories begin coming back, June has to decide will the past become her future or will she take the door home.

This book had me hooked immediately which took me by surprise as the synopsis didn't strike me as anything special. I was completely wrong. The Unmaking of June Farrow is easily one of my top five reads of 2023. It has elements for everyone: time travel, romance, murder mystery, vengeance.