80/100 or 4.0 stars

I was not sure what to expect going into this, but I had such an emotional rollacoaster ride! There was comedy, there was tragedy, there was love, there was all of the feels. I enjoyed this story so much, despite the fact that the set up in the first third feels like a concept that has been done a few times before.
The writing was enjoyable and engaging. A lovely YA story that I would like to get my hands on a physical copy at some point!

this book is INSANE. i am an amanda dewitt stan first and a human being second, so there was no doubt going into this.
the plot was interesting, unique, and so fun. the characters were dynamic, well-written, and felt fully developed.
i was hooked from the very beginning, and when the end happened i felt like i was missing a part of me because i was so invested in this story.
cried, laughed, celebrated, and thrived.

This was fantastic and beautiful, and I liked it so much that I pre-ordered a finished copy before I even finished reading it.
There's just something about Amanda Dewitt's writing that speaks to me. It's funny and sarcastic and a little dark, and it always has so so much hope and love. While the characters in this one weren't as strong to me as in her first two books, I still really liked them and rooted for them. I liked seeing Grace and Lara connect, I liked watching Grace slowly open herself up again. This is my kind of fantasy story, where the magic is whimsical and the heart is truly there.
I mean personally, do I have any idea at all how any of this worked? No. Not even a little. But I don't think that's cause it wasn't explained well. I do not understand anything to do with time and the bending of it. But I was along for the ride anyway and I am so happy that I was.
I love the way Amanda's books explore the different kinds of love and friendship, and while none of the characters in here are explicitly asexual like in her past two books, this book still shows us such a unique and beautiful take on love. Grace and Jake have such an interesting and odd relationship- two people bound by the magic of what's happening and by the pain they've felt. It's crazy to me that Amanda did such a good job portraying love and kinship between two people who never actually meet.
Honestly my total thoughts on this are simply that I would like to read everything Amanda Dewitt ever writes forever and ever thank you

4.5 ⭐
AH! I enjoyed this book so much and know younger me would've loved it even more. Ate it up in one sitting! I don't even know how to summerize it without giving any spoilers; however I will say this:

*FMC solves mystery by communicating with a person 30 years in the past via cassette tapes*

If that sounds like something up your alley, PICK THIS UP!

This was my first Amanda DeWitt book, but definitely not my last.

Thank you Holiday House / Peachtree / Pixel+Ink | Peachtree Teen and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This was such a haunting read, it dealt with so many dark and poignant topics but it handled them very well. Definitely a very emotional read overall.

Graphic: Loss of a Parent, Grief, Car Accident, Death, Panic Attack, Disassociation, Derealisation.
Moderate: Murder, Blood, Injury Detail, Medical Content

Thank you Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Representations: https://trello.com/c/AFPp8tnh/132-the-underwood-tapes-by-amanda-dewitt

Read this in 2 settings, half of the book each time. I got absolutely HOOKED!

It's a little hard to keep track of who's who over 3 different generations but there's not too many characters over all. Mainly just a couple different "generation lines" and the rest of the characters were easy to keep track of. Trying to work out how each character was related though.. I gave up on that fast but I think that's the point 😂
They were pretty nice to read though, not too tropey and were different enough from each other. Grace being the POV was nice, she didn't read too young and had a good amount of wits about her. The emotions, the grief, the generational trauma running through the town was really well written imo and it ties together really nicely. The cover also not having Jakes face is just perfection ngl.

The story was one hell of a ride. I can't say I read the description of this - if I did I'd entirely forgotten by the time I got to reading the book lol - so I went in blind. When I got to the hook of this book, I legit just like, put down my e-reader for a second and just knew this book is gonna be fantastic. Did not disappoint at all! The pacing kept up, it does feel like things are slightly too convenient at times but I get it tbh. Things don't get explicitly explained though but personally I'd say it's a very satisfying ending anyway that works very well. I think an actual explanation of how things happened wouldn't be good as well and it's absolutely not neeeded.

I did just love this though. I loved the nerdy parts, I loved that there wasn't romance in it and instead the emotions is all about processing the grief, trying to find light in darkness and human connections through barriers - time or otherwise.

4.5 ⭐️ such a beautiful book about grief

Thank you netgalley for the earc

Who know me knows that Amanda DeWitt previous book Wren Martin is one of my favs ever, so i was kinda anxious to read this one because i didn't know what to expect.
This book is totally different from the previous ones but i loved it nevertheless. It was such an emotional read that sometimes hurt even if i wasn't it expected to.
The mistery part got me gripped to the book to see what would happen.
The ending left me so sad but also hopeful T.T I'm glad Grace became friend with Lara and Griffin.
I loved Jake character so much I wish I could have get to know him better <3

3.65 stars. This is one of those books that’s kind of a throw away read. It’s fairly interesting and not super good but not bad, but you’ll forget everything that happened in it after a while. I liked it, but the ending upset me. What was the point if it all ended the same anyways. I liked their characters and the tape plot, but that was quite annoying.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this story.
SPOILERS TO FOLLOW

JAKE AND THE REST OF THE UNDERWOODS DESERVED BETTER!!!! I kept wishing that something Grace said would trigger a paradox so that Jake would actually survive the story. I really REALLY enjoyed him as a character and wish we could have had his POV. I kept anticipating it but everything was fully from Grace's POV. I think the story would have been THAT much more interesting if it'd been told from Jake's POV too. The generational trauma in this story was so sad to read about. I really wish the Underwoods had had some sense of justice for what was done to them. Griffin an Lara were really good characters too and I wish we saw more interactions between them and Grace.

Books with sleepy small towns are some of my favorites, especially when these towns have a mystery hidden below the surface. The Underwood Tapes feels like listening to one of those podcasts with a plot line and a full voice cast, just in written form. Grief is one of the main underlying themes in this book, a heavy fog that settles on the shoulders of our main protagonists, Grace and Jake.

When Grace Crain moves to the town of Hermitage, Florida, over the summer, she hopes it’ll be a respite from the reminder of her mother’s passing. Yet everywhere she goes, the townsfolk only seem to see her as her mother. After her uncle gets her a summer job at the Municipal Building, Grace sets to work transcribing the archive tapes so they can be digitalized. While she expects this to be boring work, she quickly realizes there’s a mystery on her hands, and that the boy recording the tapes 30 years earlier can hear anything she records on them.

But the disappearances of Charley and Jake Underwood are something the town doesn’t want unearthed. It’s up to Grace and a pre-disappearance Jake to discover what truly happened, and who the members of the Hurricane Club truly were.

I thoroughly enjoyed this! My only gripe is that the conclusion of the book wasn’t as satisfying as I hoped for, in wording as spoiler-free as possible. Thank you to NetGalley and PeachTree Books for taking a chance on me and letting me read this!

This story is pretty heavy, dealing with the deaths of several people, so be prepared to cry. In particular, a massive part of the book is Grace dealing with the death of her mother in a car accident. I thought this was written very well, showing the everyday impact on Grace's life months later.

The story is also filled with wibbley-wobbley timey-windy… stuff. Very Doctor Who-y. I was on the edge of my seat the whole, totally riveted, but also filled with dread and foreboding the entire time. I do think the ending wasn't super satisfying, after I spent the whole book hoping for... a certain thing that is a massive spoiler.

Overall I liked the book and I would recommend it, especially for the target audience (teens). I've read every book by Amanda DeWitt and I look forward to reading more from her in the future.

Thank you to Netgalley and Holiday House for the ARC.

Tropes :
-YA
- Mystery / Thriller
- Small town
- Grief
- Found family
- Time "travel" - Two people communicating through tapes

It was an enjoyable read. I really liked the mystery aspect, as well as Grace and Jake’s relationship. They’re both hurt and broken, and it feels like, even before speaking for the first time, they’re stuck in their pasts. I also enjoyed the author’s writing style. The time travel element was well done, although I felt it wasn’t explained enough.

The main reason this is a 3-star rating is that I was honestly a bit bored during the first 30% of the book. It felt like not much was happening, and there were a lot of names, places, and information thrown at me without a clear purpose. Because of this, I didn’t really care about the other characters or the slow revelations about them. I was mostly interested in Grace and Jake’s chapters (together, not separately. I would have loved to get Jake's POV too. It would have added a lot to the story and would probably have made me more attached and invested.

I think this one just wasn’t for me, but with a little more action, I could have really enjoyed it. It felt pretty slow for the first half of the book.

I don’t read many mystery/thriller books, so I couldn’t predict everything, but while some elements weren’t surprising, others were and kept things interesting. Again, I really loved Grace and Jake as the main characters—the pain and grief they share, as well as their developing, somewhat shy friendship, is so sweet. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys mystery, thrillers, small-town settings, and time travel elements in their books.

In The Underwood Tapes by Amanda Dewitt, Grace moves back to the town where her mother grew up. There was a horrible car accident in which her mother died but she survived. Grace gets a job at the library transcribing cassette tapes for the Hermitage Historical Society. While dealing with grief and anxiety, Grace stumbles upon a town mystery and develops a friendship with Jake Underwood. The weird thing about it is that he’s alive in 1992 and Grace is in 2022. Hello, Doctor Who. This story was inventive and interesting. I liked that instead of wallowing in grief, Grace found something to look forward to. ARC was provided by PeachTree Teen via NetGalley. I received an advance review copy and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Four out of five stars

Grace lives with her uncle in the small town of Hermitage over the summer where she takes up a job to digitize old cassette tapes from 30 years ago. To leave some mark in the world, she records a greeting on one of the tapes. What she didn’t expect: Jake Underwood, recording all those tapes in the first place, is answering her from the past.

It took me a little to get into the story but once I was sold I enjoyed it a lot! The beginning is a little slow but the more we get to know about the mystery around Jake and the so-called Hurricane Club, the more intriguing it gets. The mood is more broody and stormy (hehe) which is quite different from the books I usually read. But I guess that’s the beauty of auto-buy authors: they make you read books you might usually not have.

I liked Grace as our MC. She is still grieving a loss while trying to solve a time-bending mystery. Her friendship with the people in town grows a little awkwardly but in a way that made total sense to me! Sometimes you just gotta warm up to the people around you and they have to warm up to you, too. The way DeWitt makes characters interact is one of my fave things in all her books.

Jake is an interesting character to meet because .. well, he lives 30 years in the past! So we have to puzzle the pieces together that we get from the tapes bit by bit. I was rooting for him, tho, the kid doesn’t have it easy…

So if you’re into small town mysteries with a melancholic undertone, I fully recommend this read!

A teen girl deals with the grief of loosing her mother by transcribing the town's old cassette tapes but stumbles upon an unlikely connection to a boy from 1992....and a strange time bending relationship begins as they both try and uncover the mystery of the town. Grace is a eighteen year old girl who has taken a summer job in to transcribe cassette tapes for the Hermitage Historical Society. It's the perfect job to distract Grace from the grief of losing her mother in a car crash. Yet as she begins transcribing she begins hearing the voice of Jake Underwood, a boy from 1992 who can hear anything she records despite thirty years of time between them... they begin a conversation with one another. Jake needs Grace's help, he has a mystery to solve and in Grace time, no one talks about Jake... they both have to find answers but can they? Unfortunately this one was a miss for me, the mystery felt lackluster and Grace doesn't really do any investigating. I just didn't find myself all that sucked into the book and the story the way I wanted to be. I did like the relationship between Jake and Grace and the portrayal of grief in the story. It's a nice book but it just didn't fit my taste and didn't really suck me in unfortunately.

Release Date: February 4, 2025

Publication/Blog: Ash and Books (ash-and-books.tumblr.com)

*Thanks Netgalley and Holiday House / Peachtree / Pixel+Ink | Peachtree Teen for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

I'm unwell

I loved this book and everything about it. I felt like I was in Hermitage with the characters watching everything happen in front of me, the first time Jake answered Grace I had to keep reading, their relationship was just so so beautiful, and thats why it's so painful, even when I knew from the start what was coming. 💔 The depiction of grief is done amazingly well, looming over both Jake and Grace, giving them the feeling that even in their loneliness they're always closer to each other than they are in reality. I couldn't help to get mad together with Grace, as she searched for answers everyone wanted buried, and understanding why they wanted so, seeing all the pieces get together 🩹💔.

The Underwood Tapes feels like a book that exists in between places. The setting is the perfect place for the otherwordly events: a small town where everyone knows each other but no one leaves and where everyone dodges the truth and the obvious. I think it fits well with the theme. First and foremost, this book is about grief. And grief, most of the times, feels so big and encompassing that it can not be of this world.

As regards the writing, I've been a fan of the author for a while and I quite enjoy their writing, though this time I've noticed longer and more in depth paragraphs. This is not a bad thing, but proof of DeWitt's power to adapt the writing to the more heavy themes. Whilst their other books were lighthearted and fun, this one takes a darker turn and so the writing and the narration follow it too.

As for the characters, the book centers mostly on Grace and Jake, hence these are the two I felt most connected to. Grace, in particular, since she is the narrator and the story starts because of her and her pain. I think she was written perfectly, especially for the moment in her life in which she finds herself - a moment that, most often than not, comes when we least expect it and smashes everything else to pieces. And DeWitt described it perfectly.
As for Jake, there is something to be said about the character whose fate we know since the beginning but can't help but root for a different ending. Like in real life, though, the different ending doesn't come. That doesn't change anything he was before or during and his resilience and strength in pushing through.
As for Lara and Griffin, I didn't care much for them until the end. They were there to serve a purpose and push the story along and it didn't feel like anything else to me. Their attitudes at the end changed that.

Overall, while this book takes a darker turn than the author's usual works, I quite enjoyed it and I think it was perfectly done and written. It completely encapsules everything there is to grief, mixed with a little bit of mystery and time-breaking rules.

"The Underwood Tapes" is a story about grief and loss, and as such it feels weird to say that II enjoyed reading it, but alas. It isn’t anything revolutionary, but then I don’t think it intended to be. It is very readable, the characters are loveable and the story flows well. The main relationship between Grace and Jake felt very fleshed out and genuine, which is good, as it is the driving force in the story. The other relationships were often a bit one-note, but that didn’t really impact my reading experience.

Something that people might struggle with is the magic/sci-fi time travel aspect of the story. Personally, I’m usually the kind of reader who wants everything explained, especially mechanics that are as crucial to the story as time travel is in this book. However, I found that I really did not mind the fact that it goes unexplained here. It was clear that the focus of the story were the themes of grief and loss around the two main characters, and not whatever mechanics that allowed them to converse across time. While an added explanation of the time travel aspect could have elevated this book to a 5 star read for me, such an addition also runs the risk of completely ruining a story if not executed well.

Throughout the book I always figured that Jake would somehow survive, as is typical of YA books, which made his death just hit extra hard. Ultimately, I did really enjoy reading the book, even if it wasn’t perfect or overwhelmingly extraordinary, it was very nice and I’m happy I read it.

★ ★ ★ ★

“How bad do things have to be that you have to manipulate space, time, and your teenage mother, just to assure yourself that you’ll survive it after all?”

This book was so good. The whole time, I felt like I was in that one stand-off scene from The Office. The Underwood Tapes was a bit out of my comfort zone, but it was a welcome change in pace from what I have been reading recently. I was familiar with Amanda DeWitt from her previous novel, Wren Marin Ruins It All, so I was excited to read what she had written next.

It took a second, but I was fully invested in Grace’s story, her navigating trauma and grief related to losing her mother, and how the mystery of the Underwood family and the small town of Hermitage unfolds. I annotated so much with all my predictions and analysis; it was a blast to read. I only wish we saw more of the side characters, Lara, Griffin, and Oliver, involved in solving the mystery with Grace.

Thank you, NetGalley, for the eARC.

The Underwood Tapes is a small-town mystery about three generations of people. We have Grace, who lives in 2022 and is transcribing old tapes recorded by Jake Underwood, who used to be friends with Grace's mom, back in 1991. The tapes mention a so-called hurricane club, a group of people from the same generation as Grace's grandfather.

My favourite part was the way Jake and Grace communicated through the tapes. It was the part that made me want to read the book in the first place and it did not dissapoint.

The mystery did disappoint a little. It got me thinking, which is a rare thing as I usually just wait until the story unfolds itself but I do wish it had a little bit more of a plot twist to it. I guess my mind wandered a little too far.

Thank you NetGalley and Peachtree Teen for giving me access to an e-arc for review consideration. All opinions are my own.