I loved House of Hollow and I was ready for something similar so I was excited to see this author had another one coming out. This book was nothing like that, but it was wonderfully dark in its own way. I did think this one took longer to catch my interest but once it did I was swept away in this world of demons. I loved the idea that only women can bargain with demons to gain the power inherently denied them. The characters were all a bit flatter than I was hoping and I didn’t get as invested in them as I wanted to be, but by the end I felt they were fleshed out. Zara and Jude are both searching for a witch for very different reasons. Zara wants to bring her sister back to life so she can apologize for some stupid things she said. Jude accidentally tied a demon to herself poorly and it’s killing her so she wants the invocation removed. When they meet Emer they a re thrilled as they are sure she can help them, but the three of them are soon distracted by a serial killer who is hunting demon bound witches for their power.

"From the author of New York Times bestseller House of Hollow comes a darkly seductive witchy thriller where, though both men and demons lurk in shadows, girls refuse to go quietly into the night.

Three girls, one supernatural killer on the loose...

Zara Jones believes in magic because the alternative is too painful to consider - that her murdered sister is gone forever and there is nothing she can do about it. Rather than grieving and moving on, Zara decides she will do whatever it takes to claw her sister back from the grave - even trading in the occult.

Jude Wolf may be the daughter of a billionaire, but she is also undeniably cursed. After a deal with a demon went horribly wrong, her soul has been slowly turning necrotic. It's a miserable existence marred by pain, sickness, and monstrous things that taunt her in the night. Now that she's glimpsed what's beyond the veil, Jude's desperate to find someone to undo the damage she's done to herself.

Enter Emer Byrne, an orphaned witch with a dark past and a deadly power, a.k.a. the solution to both Zara's and Jude's problems. Though Emer lives a hardscrabble life, she gives away her most valuable asset - her invocations - to women in desperate situations who are willing to sacrifice a piece of their soul in exchange for a scrap of power. Zara and Jude are willing, but they first have to find Emer.

When Emer's clients start turning up dead all over London, a vital clue leads Zara and Jude right to her. If a serial killer is targeting her clients, Emer wants to know why - and to stop them. She strikes a tenuous alliance with Zara and Jude to hunt a killer before they are next on his list, even if she can't give them in return what Zara and Jude want most: a sister and a soul."

That cover is haunting.

As someone who loved House of Hollow, I was very interested in getting my hands on The Invocations. I will say off the bat, this is not HOH. It is not as immersive, but I still genuinely enjoyed it.

With girl power leading the charge, it cleverly mixes brains and strategy in a world of witch hunters. The story's got heart, wraps up nicely, has believable characters and banter, and keeps you interested. Sure, the twists are a bit predictable, but the whole storyline is fantastic. You might need to let go of reality here and there, but it's a fun read. "Invocations" serves up modern witchy vibes with a feminist tone.

Thank you to PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group, Nancy Paulsen Books, and NetGalley for allowing me to read this book!
First off, I would like to say the only reason why I will not be recommending it to my students is because I think it has too much gore for the age range I am teaching. I still, however, will recommend it to friends and others.

A friend described it as "baby's first female rage book" and I thought the description seemed pretty apt. All three protags are cis white women, and trans people are briefly mentioned in two lines and then never again, as if they were a last-minute edit. The only Black character in the book is a former client we never hear speak (but was in an abusive marriage), and while the South Asian character has an arc... it's as a cop who gets flirted with as she protests. She is, I guess, a helpful detective in that she works with our protags? And has a story of her own.

It felt. . . . it felt as if it should have been a New Adult book with some of the depth it was trying to go for, and the shallowness it ended up with. The writing was smooth, polished, and slick. I did like the demons.

𝑻𝒉𝒓𝒆𝒆 𝒈𝒊𝒓𝒍𝒔, 𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒔𝒖𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒏𝒂𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒂𝒍 𝒌𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒔𝒆 . . . .🔪🪄🧙‍♀️

Special thanks to @penguinteen @km_sutherland , and @netgalley for the #gifted e-ARC.

MY REVIEW:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

So... this book was something else! But in a good way. It's not the typical book I'd read, but it's said to be a thriller, more paranormal/fantasy than anything, but I did very much enjoy it.
[Side note: I love reading on my Kindle. It makes me feel like I read quicker on it than a physical book.] This book, even though interesting, seemed to take me forever to get through.

The whole story follows 3 girls who are following the occult in very different ways. Yet those ways cross and bring them together for better and worse.

Although this book is wildly different from the normal thrillers I usually read, I highly recommend this YA book to anyone who interested in fantasy/supernatural.

QOTD ❓️⁉️❓️ What's the last book you read slightly out of your normal genre that surprised you?

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#thrillerbooks #suspensethriller #thrillerreader #thrillerlover #thrillerobsessed #bookrecs #bookreview #bookstagram #bookaholic #booklover #bookstagrammer #booklove #bookcommunity #bookobsessed #bookworm #booksbooksbooks #booksofig #booksofinstagram #bookish #bookishfeatures #tbr #tbrpile #bookbuzz #mysteryandthrills #thrillerbooklovers #thrillerfriendsunite #theinvocations #krystalsutherland
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This is a wonderful fast paced YA fantasy with major girl boss-witch vibes. I couldn’t help but root for the trio of main characters and was quickly pulled in to the mystery they were trying to solve. The magic system could have been developed in more detail, but overall I really enjoyed this!

Try as I may, I kept revisiting this book over the span of a few months and could never get hooked into the story line. The premise sounded so appealing to me, but unfortunately I had to DNF this book.

I’m a huge fan of Krstal Sutherland and this book did not disappoint. I’ve read all of her books and this one has a very similar vibe to House of Hollow while still feeling like a very different book. The book follows three main character Jude, Zara, and Emer. All three have been affected by demon possession and they come together to try to stop a mysterious serial killer who is killing women. This book was great and kept me on the edge of my seat and read through it very quickly. My only gripe with this copy was that it should have had one more round of editing before it was given as a review copy. For some reason the book had no f’s so it made it difficult to read until you realized that was what the problem was. All in all I loved it and if you’re a fan of Krystal Sutherland you won’t be disappointed.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin for an e-ARC of this book!

The Invocations is a story of witches, demons, and palpable feminine rage. This is not my typical go-to genre, but I loved it so much! It is gross, there's a serial killer, it manages to be heartwarming, and every page simmers with the power of women. I grew to love each of the three main characters--one is cursed, one writes curses, and one is so consumed with grief that raising the dead seems like a good idea. This book will appeal to teen readers who enjoy horror, mystery, LGBTQ+ representation, and the supernatural. I will definitely be adding a copy to my classroom library!

This was one of the most grotesque books I've read in my life. While I enjoyed the plot, damn does it get graphic with pus and gangrene. The Invocations is going to stick with me for a while. I loved the feminine rage, and put next to young women who aren't flowery or cutesy, it was quite powerful. But also I don't know that I'll need a reread anytime soon.

* Thank you Netgalley & Penguin Group for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. *

"The gift of fear was given to her by the women she grew up around."

House of Hollow was the first book by Krystal Sutherland that I read - and I loved it. The Invocations has been on my TBR since the day it was announced, and I've been eagerly awaiting another dark, drippy-with-horror book from Sutherland. The Invocations delivered on that promise.

The Invocations is about 3 girls, a curse writer, a cursed girl, and a girl who misses her sister more than anything. Together, the 3 will band together to stop a killer before it's their souls on the line.

I loved the characters in House of Hollow for how viscerally real they were, and I love Zara, Emer, and Jude for the same reasons. They are annoyingly, grossly real, and despite everything they are up against, despite everyone out to get them, they are, ultimately, just girls. The world around them is out to get them - girls, witches, women, all of them, all the time, and Zara, Emer, and Jude are just girls who want to survive, and more than that, live without fear. That's the message in The Invocations, and there's some other ones, too, but you'll have to read to find those out.

Please do yourself a favor and read The Invocatons. Beyond being a great book, it is a creepy crawly thriller that will keep you glued to the pages til the very end.

I absolutely loved House of Hollow, so I was really eager to read this one. Unfortunately, that dissipated pretty much once I started reading. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the gore and horror aspect of this novel, but the pacing was completely wrong. There were multiple perspectives, but I found it hard to distinguish one from another. I generally don't enjoy pop culture references in novels, unless it adds to the atmosphere, but this felt extremely formulaic, and every time it happened on the page, I ended up getting distracted. This made finishing the novel a chore and honestly, I just couldn't wait for it to be finished.

While this didn't give me the same feelings as House of Hollow, I really enjoyed reading The Invocations.
This book is about girls taking power into their own hands by getting invocations.. basically spells that give girls powers by attaching demons to them in exchange for a slice of their souls.
I loved the whole premise of this book, and Emer was a stand-out favorite character right from the first page. She's a survivor and a fighter and brings so much to this story. I liked Jude and Zara well enough, but I could have read the whole story with Emer as the main character. I loved the magic, the gore, and all the surprising moments. Krystal Sutherland did a great job building the suspense and tension as we get closer to discovering who the murderer is, and when it's revealed I was definitely surprised.

I love Krystal Sutherland's books and I will absolutely be reading any horror books she writes.

Thank you to Penguin Group and Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC of this book for review purposes

This book is an ode to women who take matters into their own hands against an unjust world. It captures so much of the fear, angst and rage that women go through at the hands of abuse by men, and feeds it into a “Good for Her” fantasy I think a lot of young women can relate to.

Krystal Sutherland is so good at giving a wide range of horror vibes in her books. She can do slower, more gross-out horrifying moments, as well as gut-punching jumpscares that leave you shocked and breathless. Yes, this book is YA, so maybe it doesn’t go as far as an adult horror would with the same subject matter, but it still gives me that uneasy feeling that no other YA horror author has for me.

Some other things I loved:
Jude calling her four older brothers “the Horseman” is such a good nickname that feels like something a real teenager would come up with, and also tells you so much about their personalities without spending too much time with them.
The demon characters and their bond with Emer, as well as some of the final reveals of their end goals really nail down the “Good for her” vibes as Emer got her revenge.

My only critique was personally, I didn’t love our main three protagonists as much as I did the Hollow sisters in House of Hollow. Jude a lot of the time is downright annoying, with her snarky commentary feeling a little forced. Zara is a bit better, but was lacking in the common sense department, especially with her eventual alternative plan to bring her sister back from the dead. Emer is the best of the three, who I instantly loved from her opening chapter; she’s smart, resourceful, a fighter, and her eventual self-destructive goals make sense from everything she’s been through. I didn’t really understand her and Jude’s attraction, and thought Zara and Jude had a better “straight man, funny man” combo going on, but I didn’t really need this book to have a pronounced romance at all for me to like it.
Overall, I enjoyed my time reading this book, and think this author is a standout in the YA Horror genre that everyone should check out.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Young Readers Group for providing a copy of this eARC for review.

I very much enjoyed this novel. It was a little more gruesome than I was expecting, and the content (especially with souls) a darker than anticipated. I loved those aspects of the story. I felt that the relationships and behaviours of the characters were believable, and the friendships formed were an interesting contrast of personalities. I felt that there could have been more information about the events and results after the climax of the story. The conclusion left me with some questions. I'm hopeful for a sequel, but it is an ambiguous end. It could certainly end there and it would be satisfactory, but I enjoyed the characters and wouldn't mind seeing more of their lives.

It took me a little bit to get into this story because I had to get used to, and keep straight, the different character POVs. Also, my e-arc had some weird formatting issues where some of the words had wonky characters, so I had to get used to that and not get stuck on it every time one popped up. I loved the demon aspect, and the magic in the story. Once I got the characters straight I really started to love them. I can't wait for my library to get physical copies of this book, I think that it's going to be popular with teens who want scarier magical components like demons! I wish this wasn't a stand alone because I would definitely go for more in this world/with this magic.

This is a dark YA horror thriller that follows three young women as they try to solve a murder mystery. The story involves witches and monsters and magic which honestly makes it a possibly good read for the winter. Has that bit of gothic touch to the story while it’s snowing outside I think is very fitting. This is also a very girl power kind of story, very feminist about strong female characters. This is also a standalone which are always very nice to read in between those long fantasy series so look out for this on the 30 of January.

I’ll start by saying that I set high expectations for this title when it was announced. With the blurb and verbiage around it, I expected “a girl walks alone at night, pursued by an unknown stranger, and yet she’s the thing feared in the dark”. I got that and enjoyed those aspects of the story immensely. Sutherland continues with her expressive writing style as it emphasizes the atmospheric edge and a true sense of place.

What struggles arose for me though came from the main female characters and their relationship to each other. In House of Hollow, you understand how integral the sister relationship is to the story and the characters themselves. Here, there is a push to establish the trio as a group that needs each other and at the beginning of a strong fierce bond necessary to complete the mystery. That’s not a consistent aspect of the story. When the girls connect for the first time, you feel the promise of something amazing about to transpire plot-wise, theme-wise, and character-wise. They’ll push each other, challenging expectations - you name it. I don’t feel that potential was fully realized. With the story being split POV of the three characters, some chapters felt indistinguishable in the voice and temperament of our characters. At times, I felt like the characters had watered-down qualities of the sisters in House of Hollow.

As it comes to the mystery, some aspects kept me hooked to continue to understand how everything weaves together. But, when the trio hit a roadblock or lost momentum I felt disinterested. Especially when character-building moments (just talking) are substituted for weaving in the character growth with the mystery investigation. For House of Hollow, the ending/reveal is very clear very early on if you have any knowledge of the fantasy stories at play. But, even though I knew the ending I was hooked because I was invested in seeing how the characters grow during the investigation and how the reveal would affect them. Because I did not have this investment in these characters here I was left without the needed intrigue necessary when the mystery was not as elaborate as I expected.

To add on, the queer storyline felt shoehorned. There is a world in which this storyline naturally fits within this context but unfortunately, I don’t believe in the relationship presented. Meaning I don’t see how any meaningful character moments occurred for those two characters to feel love for each other outside of lust.

The last thing that made it difficult for me was the way themes were presented. In my mind, I have concluded it to be “Baby’s First Men Sucks” book, and I don’t say that to be derivative but to point out at times how dated the concepts and conclusions the author reaches when certain narrative points arrive. It felt like a note was given to restate your thesis as much as possible when trust should be put upon its reader even as young as 13 to understand the subtext, motifs, or callbacks present. As such with this limited feminism lens imparted on the title, at times it felt exclusionary to the other identities that made appearances in the book. There are moments of assertion that all women experience violence from men (which I appreciated). Still, it’s unfortunate that a woman who becomes a suspect in this investigation is the only Black character mentioned. Her suspicion as a suspect imparting violence against other (mostly white) women left a bad taste in my mouth in those implications. When the characters’ biases are not addressed it felt like I, a Black woman, was not a part of this women’s unity theming. As such, this Black female character’s brief storyline is not fully fleshed out in the way it deserves.

All in all, though I enjoyed the story and the characters when they were by themselves I felt that the overall potential of the story was far greater than the product.

House of Hollow is one of my favorite books of all time and is never far from my thoughts. I love it so much that I wish frequently that I could read it again for the first time. So obviously my excitement for The Invocations has been through the roof since Sutherland announced it and I was overjoyed to receive an ARC of this book from NetGalley. It lived up to all of my hopes and expectations and more! Gory, gruesome, beautiful, feminist, angry, queer, and magical: all of my favorite things. ❤️ This book does it so amazingly well.

The way that Sutherland takes the time to introduce you to characters in both HoH and The Invocations makes the reader feel so invested so quickly. I fell in love with all three young women so quickly because their back stories and the time and detail that went into them made me root for them and understand their choices and actions. You feel the anger, sadness, and isolation with them. You feel the kinship of the witches, but also of just all women and the terrors faced in their daily lives.

I loved the darker horror aspect of it and how Sutherland did not shy away from the grotesque and gory and the story was definitely better for it. Now I’m just sad that I have finished her new book before it even came out and have to wait years for another one 🤣

Emer, Zara, and Jude are three young women that are struggling, alone. Until they find each other. Then they're still struggling, but at least they have each other. Emer is hiding her dangerous witchy talents, Zara is determined to bring her sister back from the dead, and Jude is desperate to break the curse she placed on herself. But a killer is stalking women they know, and they'll be next on the list if they can't figure out how to stop him in time...

I absolutely adored this book! I loved House of Hollow so I had high hopes for this one, and fortunately I was not not at all disappointed. The three main characters are all excellently rendered, and the pace of the story moves along at a nice clip after the first 15% or so. I loved how dark and gritty this book was, and the magic system around invocations and demons was so unique. I didn't find the reveal of the killer to be super surprising (I, too, have a head for languages), but this didn't detract from my enjoyment at all. Great dialogue between the characters as well, especially Jude!!

I highly recommend this one if you like witchy reads, gothic vibes, and strong young female characters. Thank you to Krystal Sutherland, Penguin/Nancy Paulsen, and NetGalley for my advance digital copy.