review

Novel: Sawkill Girls by Claire LeGrand | Goodreads
Release Date: October 2, 2018
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (HarperCollins)
Format: Hardcover
Source: Bought

Beware of the woods and the dark, dank deep.

He’ll follow you home, and he won’t let you sleep.

Who are the Sawkill Girls?

Marion: the new girl. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Weighed down by tragedy and hungry for love she’s sure she’ll never find.

Zoey: the pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Maybe she’s broken—or maybe everyone else is.

Val: the queen bee. Gorgeous and privileged, ruthless and regal. Words like silk and eyes like knives, a heart made of secrets and a mouth full of lies.

Their stories come together on the island of Sawkill Rock, where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires.

Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight… until now.

I’ve been looking forward to this read for a while. It was one of my top picks from ALA 2018 this summer, and I also featured it in my October releases spotlight. Still, Sawkill Girls is one of those books I wanted to own in hardcover. As someone who flat out refuses to order print books from Amazon, I suffered in my small town (which doesn’t have any good bookstores.)

Within a few pages, it was worth the wait. Claire LeGrand’s fierce setting and bloodthirsty premise make for an engaging read right away; throw in some twisted character dynamics and some stunning language for flavor. The Rock itself has a persona, and it reminds me a little of The Scorpio Races.

The plot begins with Marion, who introduces herself as a “mountain,” suffering through the recent death of her father. As a way of dealing with their grief, her family uproots to the money-saturated Sawkill Rock. Once there, the charismatic pull of the Mortimer family is obvious over the rest of the island. Their horses are beloved, and their daughter Val has a magnetism that draws everyone closer.

A magnetism that Zoey, the tough and noble sheriff’s daughter, keeps trying to tell everyone isn’t normal. Thora, her best friend, wouldn’t be missing if not for having become best friends with Val. But as everyone keeps telling her — including her ex-boyfriend and best friend, Grayson — everyone on the island has a connection to the Mortimers, so she has no definitive evidence.

But when Marion’s sister, Charlotte, gets tangled up with Val, and Mairon starts hearing voices, their paths collide in ways that make it clear that whatever force is on the island is only getting stronger.

For one, I’m weak for books with weird, alluring characters. Additionally, Val was complicated, and so I actually ended up loving her. The Collector (bogeyman) and her mother beat her down, but she’s also so desensitized to the killings. She’s morally gray, and beyond well-written. The book revolves around the Mortimers, and everything else that happens is an offshoot of that.

I feel like most supernatural books like this — that feel straight out of a horror movie — tiptoe around the subject a little too much, but Sawkill Girls plunges straight in. People die, and disappear. Val knows about it. Ensue shenanigans.

Sawkill Girls doesn’t hold back with the violence. The bogeyman feeds, and the aftermath isn’t made into a euphemism. The taken girls suffer; the narrative mentions body parts, screaming, and plenty of gory details that make it even more painful to read about girls fighting back against the monster.

Zoey and Marion were both great characters as well, for different reasons. Zoey was angry and outcast, but also pretty normal and relatable. Plus, her relationship with Grayson was confused but built on a ton of affection and history that was appealing and well-developed. Marion was grieving and tough, but also down-to-earth and accessible. Each of the points-of-view feels distinct but fits with the tone of the book.

The lore and the pacing are executed phenomenally. On one note, the magical bits of it are folky and all-encompassing — my favorite. The setting feeds the atmosphere which feeds the language. And normally, with books like this that are so writing-heavy, it feels like the plot or logic goes to the wayside. With the exception of some scatteredness at the end, the narrative itself was pretty tight. Towards the end, spots of it could feel a little too drawn out.

The tone of the book does change. It’s always dark and sinister, with a lot of mysticism. In some patches, it gets brutally harsh. Still, the language softens it and captures a lot of the island persona. (“Place as character” is one of my favorite tropes.) Towards the end, it gets a little whimsical, and I lost hold of the plot. Still, the character dynamics, prose, and setting were enough to keep me rooted to the story.

The bogeyman was terrifying. The force described was powerful and threatening, but never felt flat. Its behavior was always unhinged, and unsettling, and the verbs used to describe the creature made it really potent. (Weird compliment, but I’m going to roll with it — LeGrand’s control and precision of her language really shone in this regard.)

I will note that although it’s a powerful feminist narrative — and has gotten a lot of praise for its queer relationship, as well as its girls-fighting-with-girls focus, which is awesome — it could occasionally feel a little too aggressive in that regard. We get it, men are evil. Also, certain elements of the plot felt too heavily manipulated to fit this theme, which seemed to disrupt the flow of the story.

Overall, I loved Sawkill Girls. It was so up my alley — chilling, malevolent antagonist; a gripping supernatural mystery; complicated, morally gray characters who were all equally engrossing; stunning writing; place as character. Its quick pacing paired with the thoroughly dark, saturated atmosphere made it an escapist read. It reminds me a lot of Stranger Things meets The Babadook meets The Graces, with some possession thrown in for good measure. Huge fan.

Novel: One Day in December by Josie Silver | Goodreads
Release Date: October 16, 2018
Publisher: Broadway Books
Format: Paperback
Source: Bought

A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick

“Get ready to be swept up in a whirlwind romance. It absolutely charmed me.” —Reese Witherspoon

“Josie Silver writes with a warmth so palpable her characters sneak their way into your heart and stay for a long time.”—Jill Santopolo, New York Times-bestselling author of The Light We Lost

Two people. Ten chances. One unforgettable love story.

Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn’t exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there’s a moment of pure magic…and then her bus drives away.

Certain they’re fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn’t find him, not when it matters anyway. Instead they “reunite” at a Christmas party, when her best friend Sarah giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. It’s Jack, the man from the bus. It would be.

What follows for Laurie, Sarah and Jack is ten years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken, and destinies reconsidered. One Day in December is a joyous, heartwarming and immensely moving love story to escape into and a reminder that fate takes inexplicable turns along the route to happiness.

Although I’m not a love-at-first-sight human, and I tend to hate its occurrence in my book choices, I somehow thought that One Day in December would be different. My review’s likely going to sound as if I hated it — which I didn’t — but I did have a lot of criticisms. I actually thought it was a rather pleasant read, and I’ll likely recommend it to those looking for a surface-level way to spend a few hours with a festive book.

First of all, I should talk about the structure of the book. One Day in December takes place over a few years, with each chapter conveying an important moment, or turning point, in Jack and Laurie’s relationship. Although I can see why Silver chose to do it that way, it felt a little scattered. Huge gaps of time, and then short bursts.

Additionally, she tended to go by topic, instead of pacing out different subplots over the course of the book. You’d get a couple chapters about an accident, and then another few chapters about her dad, and then another few chapters about a particular relationship. Because of the strange lapses in time, the heavy focus on one topic felt a little unrealistic. I doubt Laurie would have happened to be dissecting this exact moment months later, and just conveniently have an update for the reader.

Because of the gaps in time, and the topic-oriented organization, the pacing was pretty bad. Things unfolded in one burst rather than over time, and it was hard to keep my head in the book.

All in all, I think my problem with One Day in December was just that the writing felt weak. Every choice that Silver made felt convenient, but not realistic. For the record, I enjoy fairytale romances and holiday romances and whirlwinds — ones that aren’t too close to reality, but a nice form of escapism. But I could never quite root for our starring couple because whatever reality in which they operated just felt so, so far removed from the reactions that normal people had to certain scenarios.

Every wrench and every conflict thrown in their path was too obvious, and some subtlety would have been appreciated; additionally, with the exception of searingly obvious tropes, not much seemed to happen. For example, the phone rang with an accident involving one of the characters twice, and the cutoff of the chapter was meant to be suspenseful but we’d already seen the device used before. They didn’t really have that many issues, and so the middle of the book dragged.

Basically, the plot revolves around Laurie and Jack catching a glimpse of each other on their commute and feeling suddenly, grippingly in love. Jack attempts to board the bus but misses it, and both reflect for months, and years on that mysterious, alluring stranger. The concept of a fantasy person isn’t particularly unrealistic; neither is the hope that they might magically solve all your problems if they might only fall in love with you. But the language surrounding it, the bizarre certainty Laurie and Jack had about each other, ultimately fell flat, particularly because it’s supposed to take place over years. I’m somewhat disappointed in the potential of it all.

Once the two actually meet and engage with each other, they don’t really seem to notice that much about each other. Jack mentions once that Laurie makes everyone feel special, and talks about her dark hair and kindness. Laurie mentions Jack as being witty and ambitious, but largely just refers to him as the boy on the bus. While they’re clearly attracted to each other, and ultimately end up having history because of their proximity and friendship, the descriptions don’t add enough to the passion or the conviction that they have about ending up together. Their relationship is vague: “pure magic,” “supposed to be together,” etc,. but not much explanation as to why. Laurie also dates a man named Oscar and I actually rooted for them the whole time.

Laurie, as a character, was likable enough. Her confusion and wavering was genuine, and so her reactions weren’t quite as off-putting as that of other characters. Because we’re often in her head, we do get quite a lot of info-dumping. She’s telling us the story the whole time without actually living it.

Jack, honestly, wasn’t that nice or good to other people. He was so wrapped up in his own desires and pity party that there wasn’t that much of a reason to root for him — or for them to get together.

Both of them were complicated enough as people, experiencing a wide variety of emotions over the years during which this book takes place. But their relationship was too flat.

A line that I read in a review says that One Day in December reads like a thriller because of secrets and “heart-aching betrayals.” But really, it’s just a missed-communication trope that seems carried too far, and without the writing finesse to back it up. I suppose I’m just frustrated because it had the potential to be SO good, but Silver always took the easy way out. Having characters actually work through something would have been much more difficult as an author but so much more satisfying as a reader.

In any case, I don’t really buy into the praise, or why this one is getting so popular. It’s cute, but there are much cuter books with better pacing, plotting, and writing. It was too convenient, and its “twists” were too familiar. I enjoyed the festivity and still found the read endearing, but I don’t think it was executed as well as it could have been. Anyone who knows me would characterize me as a romantic, as someone who gets swept up in daydreams. But even I’m too practical for this one.

However, although I’ve just spent a thousand words ragging on it, I can still see a good amount of people enjoying it. If you want to kill a few hours and get yourself ready for Christmas, or just want to see two people fighting to be together, it fills a niche that might satisfy what you want from the holidays.

If you’re like I am and see yourself not enjoying this one, check out Miss You by Kate Eberlen for a similar, slow-build romance about missed connections and two people drifting towards each other over the years.

Sawkill Girls by Claire LeGrand

One Day in December by Josie Silver