Thank you Angry Robot & Caroline Hardaker for this read.

This book took me a while to get through. Despite having both the audiobook & ebook, I didn't find myself hooked.

The imagery was really great and I feel this was a very slow burn. It was strange and unqiue, I found the protagonist intriguing.

The plot and ending was different to what i expected and I did enjoy the unique ride this provided, despite being on the stranger side and slower side.

Mothtown is the second novel by British poet and author, Caroline Hardaker. David Porter is ten years old when he sees his grandfather, Frank for the last time. Dr Francis Porter is a researcher of multiverses working in the Superstring Theory and Dark Matter studies area of the University of York’s Department of Physics. He never returns from his annual mid-winter expedition in search of his doorway to salvation, and David’s father tells his family that Frank died in hospital. But that feels wrong to David.

David and Grandad shared a secret language of clicks and bumps and hums, as set our in their copies of the Verbatinea. And now, at Grandad’s house, the Key Verbatinea, Grandad’s yellow duffel bag and his favourite scratchy orange jumper with the brass sparrow button, are missing. David is certain that Grandad must still be out there somewhere, and the longer he’s absent, the more certain he is that his grandfather found his doorway.

People are already accustomed to people going missing, something dubbed The Modern Problem, The epidemic. The disappearing. The eloping. The exodus, and friends and family members become door-steppers, carrying photos and searching, posting “Have you seen…” bills everywhere. Are the piles of bones and feathers the remains of those gone? Those depressed souls who don’t make that exodus from their lives but feel misfit, are often gathered by smiling Blue Pilgrims, stashed in Blue Houses, neatly erasing the problem for authorities?

David’s family are uneasy about his focus on Frank’s work and his father seems determined to obstruct his search, but David knows that Hidden Worlds, the book Frank wrote, will lead him to the doorway. Because David knows he doesn’t belong in this world either.

We are told that a talented author will show rather than tell, but there’s not really enough of either here, and the disjointed feel is not just a product of the dual timeline narrative: characters seem to turn up haphazardly, things happen which seem like they ought to be significant to the plot, but connections are never made, and resolution is lacking.

Is David (definitely an unreliable narrator) turning into a bird? A moth? In the end, who knows, or cares! The misuse of personal pronouns grates, and parts read like a fever dream or the paranoid ramblings of a deluded person, becoming rather tiresome. This is a tale that might appeal to fans of dystopian sci-fi.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Angry Robot

ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a little backlogged with my ARC’s but working hard to get caught up. This book really took me by surprise! Just when I thought it was headed in one direction, it completely veers off and goes a different way! Without giving too much away, this story is beautifully written and the characters are extremely complex, nothing is as it appears. I loved the setting of Mothtown and despite all the strange things going on, I’d love to visit if it was a real place! I’d recommend to anyone who likes mystery, science fiction, and suspense with a touch of horror!

DNF @30% - I’m sorry I just couldn’t get into this one. The way the story was being told felt very removed (?) I can’t think of a better way to describe it. The synopsis makes the plot seem so cool and intriguing but from what I read, it was pretty jumbled and uninteresting.

In all honesty, I restarted this book twice just to make sure I was giving it the fair shot it deserved, and I still was not enjoying it at all so I finally had to decide to set it down for good.

It's difficult to add to what others have said. Well-written, atmospheric, certainly an interesting book though I'm not as convinced as to whether the main story flows or for all the different writing, that it stands out. At least not for fives stars! Interesting and a little different particularly of interest for the more inventive, surreal at times prose, worth pursuing/perservering with.

I suspect my opinion of this book will change over time. And very possibly elements went over my head. It's a dark and twisting tale with gorgeous illustrations and a genuine sense of grimy melancholy that I found compelling. But I never managed to determine quite why I was there or what had happened. Which might, perhaps, be the point, or might be my own failing.

“Mothtown” is a mesmerizing and thought-provoking novel that will linger in readers’ minds long after they’ve turned the final page. Hardaker’s lyrical prose and imaginative storytelling make this novel a standout in this genre, and ensure that it will be remembered as a modern classic.

I was not a fan of this book at all. It was flat and boring. It wasn’t scary and it was predictable. Overall not good.

Mothtown is one of those books you read that starts out seemingly confusing and disjointed in the beginning, but over the course of the story slowly stiches itself together. It's a book about grief, loss, loneliness, and mental illness, we follow David Porter as he struggles with the death of his grandfather, trying to deal with his confusing feelings of betrayal, abandonment, grief, and anger. The story is told through a split timeline, one labeled "Before" and the other "After" both connected by David's belief that his grandfather did not die, but instead found a doorway to another world- a doorway that he thinks his grandfather left clues for him to find himself and follow him through. The story is all told through David's perspective who is in simple terms, a very unreliable narrator, this gives the book a strange, almost fever-dreamlike feeling that only intensifies as the story continues and David's convictions strengthen. For me the way I felt about the story fluctuated between sad and empathetic towards David, frustrated with the way the story was structured, and confused with the pacing at certain points of the book towards the end. I still had an overall enjoyable reading experience with this book and I'm grateful to netgalley and the publisher for giving me this e-arc in exchange for an honest review. If you're a fan of the "fever dream" qualities of books like I'm Thinking of Ending Things and Bunny (just that one feature, aside from that those three books are VERY different, they just all have that moment where you stare at a page for 5 minutes trying to figure out what you just read and if you're just staring at a blank page and hallucinating words instead or actually reading a real book) then you might enjoy Mothtown too. I'm giving it a 3 star rating mostly because I felt the beginning and middle were enjoyable but the ending fell a little bit flat, but it was an enjoyable read.

I wanted to love this, but it just fell a little flat for me. Overall, it was a good book, and i liked the premise, it just wasnt for me.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

This really wasn't for me. I felt there was just too build up in the world of Mothtown and so the story ended up getting lost on me. Beautiful writing but, I just felt engulfed in it all a bit too much.

I actually really loved this book it was so atmospheric and really dragged you into the story! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book.

A lovely genre-bending story. The vibes are eerie and I thoroughly enjoyed the dystopian horror, as well as the fantastical elements.

Mothtown was not for me. It didn't really sing as horror to me and I don't think it was marketed to the right crowds. I was bored and didn't really know what was going on for the whole book. The main character David is super unlikeable at least for me and I was over him and his problems so fast. This book is also super wordy and the whole meaning of the story gets lost. David ends up just being mentally ill and there isn't actually any fantasy. Mothtown could have been an awesome book but the execution wasn't great in my opinion. Its definitely more literary than horror or fantasy.


Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!

Dreamlike and eerie, the prose here is masterful at creating atmosphere. A weird story that gives the feeling of being untethered from reality and lost in this strange and mysterious story. Ultimately the mystery was a little too opaque for me and I struggled a bit with the feeling of obfuscation and withholding of answers, but I can see how this could work excellently for another reader or even another mood. Overall I found it to be beautifully written with fantastic atmosphere.

Haunting, eerie, and unique, Caroline Hardaker captured my heart and soul with Mothtown (and not to mention the fabulous illustrations by Chris Riddell which were pure perfection). Mothtown had a way of drawing me in, and keeping me returning to find out what happened to David. The atmosphere is thick, and the characters are well fleshed out, Mothtown gave me T. Kingfisher vibes in the best possible way!
I have every intention of sourcing some other Caroline Hardaker books in the future, and so should you 😏.

Unfortunately, I was unable to download this book before it was archived and so am leaving this as a review/explanation as I didn't know what else to do after finding a few books I had managed to miss in a section of my account entitled Not Active: Archived, Not Downloaded; so I thought it best to clear it up. I have already bought a copy and will leave a review on places like Amazon, Goodreads, Waterstones, etc, once I've completed it and formed my thoughts on it. Apologies for any inconvenience and thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher Angry Robot for the digital ARC, it has not affected my honest review.

TW: grief, violence, injury, mental illness, unreliable narrator

“Mothtown” is a strange tale but I was hooked from the first page. There is no one in the world that young David loves more than his explorer grandfather, the two of them are different from everyone else in a world that no one will explain but with Grandad, David feels seen and understood even as people go missing and bodies are found with wings. They're so connected that they've created their own language as David's parents turn off the news whenever he enters a room and his elder sister ignores what's happening around them seemingly on purpose. However, when David is ten years old, he is told by his parents that Grandad has died while on a research trip, looking for a mysterious mountain and a place named Mothtown. David can't believe that Grandad would leave his precious travelling backpack or orange jumper behind, and it soon becomes clear that Grandad has disappeared like so many other people have. And in the future, we follow David as an adult as he seeks out Mothtown for himself, fleeing through hostile wilderness and people hunting him in order to find the answers he needs.

I have no idea how to explain how I feel about this story, partly because it's such a mixture of genres and also because of spoilers. Parts of this I really enjoyed, particularly the tense moments we spend with adult David as he searches for the truth, while others- more specifically the background mysteries- weren't as well developed as I would have liked. For most of the book it felt very wandering, with David's narration veering off in both the past and the present. I loved the character of Grandad and what he meant to David, but the oppressive atmosphere of this book means its one I probably won't come back to.

I was really excited about this book, based on the premise, genre, and the cover. I could not get through it.
"Mothtown" offers a peculiar mix of speculative fiction and horror, detailing the life of David, a quiet boy with a grandfather fascinated by multiverse doorways, who disappeared mysteriously.
The overwhelming writing style filled with excessive similes (how many do you need per page?!) was distracting and it wasn't easy to get into the book.
The pacing, alternating between past and present, was confusing and disrupted the narrative flow, in my opinion. I see a lot of 5-star reviews so clearly, the book has its audience. Maybe I will revisit it at some point but for now, it just did not seem worth the time to suffer through.

Thank you for the ARC, NetGalley!

I am not entirely sure how to describe Mothtown, but I know I loved it. The reader just has to give in and not try to understand everything. The sooner you realise just how unreliable the narrator is, the better. The atmosphere was great and really got to my bones. I am sure that it would be a great hit with anyone looking for a fever dream of a novel, and those who enjoy not being sure if they are reading a magical realism novel or a psychological lit fic.
The illustrations were beautiful! I don't hate the cover but I am a bit disappointed that it is not in that style.