Hillary Monahan

CW: for rape, sexual harassment, and abuse.

This was interesting, though not quite what I expected. Having read Monahan's Mary Duology (and loved it), I was expecting this to be more of a horror novel, but I honestly wouldn't classify it as that. Is it a dark story? Yes. Is there gore and violence? Yes. But is it really horror? I guess that's debatable, but in my opinion no.

It is a story of revenge (which I do love a good revenge story), however with this I just felt the pacing was off and could have been improved. We spend quite a bit of time in the beginning getting to know the characters and setting up the world. This part could have been shorten a bit, and we could have gotten to the inciting incident sooner. I thought the majority of the story would have focused on Bethan (our MC) getting revenge on the boys who abused/assaulted her, however this part of the story was not as long as I thought it would be.

I thought it was interesting seeing the internal struggle Bethan went through between wanting to get revenge and hurt the boys who abused her and not wanting to engage in violence and become a monster herself.

Overall, I did like the story, it just wasn't exactly what I was expecting.… (lisätietoja)

If you like ghost stories and the legend of Bloody Mary you're going to have a blast reading this one.

A solid horror novel, filled with action and creepy imagery. Well written and with fleshed-out characters. It's always refreshing to read clever, empathising teenage girls that love and support each other without being written as pefrect little dolls. I absolutely LOVED it. If it had an actual ending I would rate it 5/5 stars. Too bad it has that tacky cover that makes it seem like it would be a more campy, badly written story. I almost skipped it because of that.

I don't really understand why it wasn't released as one novel instead of a series. It's fast paced and sucks you in, I almost felt compelled to read it in one go. One moment I was going to peruse through a single chapter before going to bed, and suddenly the book had already ended and I was pretty bummed not to have the second installment ready at hand.

Now I know, many books are easy to read and that doesn't speak much about their content -far from it. Sometimes it's the second worst compliment you can pay a novel (the first being that «well, at least it was short”). But it does immerse you into the story, the action is constant and the mystery tones are intriguing. After all, it is a bloody Mary story. It tells you so from its title. It's filled with ghosts and gore and teenage girls. You know what you're in for, it's not like you're going in expecting a Bonjour Tristesse, or a Zone One kind of book. And it freaking delivers everything its premise promises.
Except for a true ending.

But you'll read the second book too so maybe that's not a bad thing after all. Because the storytelling was so addictive I didn't want it to end, and secretly I was glad to have an excuse to stay longer in this world. Rotting fingernails, foggy mirrors and candles in the night and all.… (lisätietoja)