The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

“As I gradually restore Words Like Silver to its archive of reviews written between 2011 and 2024, I'll aim to first and foremost make my reading history explorable by publishing the blurbs and short reflections as books cross my mind, with the goal of eventually transferring and fleshing out the original WLS content. For now, please enjoy this brief spotlight.”

For fans of We Were Liars and How I Live Now comes a haunting, sexy, magically realistic debut about a family caught between a violent history, a taboo romance, and the mysteries lurking in their own backyard.

Every October Cara and her family become inexplicably and unavoidably accident-prone. Some years it's bad, like the season when her father died, and some years it's just a lot of cuts and scrapes. This accident season—when Cara, her ex-stepbrother, Sam, and her best friend, Bea, are 17—is going to be a bad one. But not for the reasons they think.Cara is about to learn that not all the scars left by the accident season are physical: There's a long-hidden family secret underneath the bumps and bruises. This is the year Cara will finally fall desperately in love, when she'll start discovering the painful truth about the adults in her life, and when she'll uncover the dark origins of the accident season—whether she's ready or not.

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I LOVE THIS BOOK. Hands down, one of my favorites of the year. The Accident Season is sinister and creepy and devastatingly romantic in the sense that it heightens every emotion. Everything's on the edge. Everything is crafted masterfully and dreamily—even the horrors that the characters experience are made pretty somehow by the language and the mystery of it. The book starts with a bang, and the tension builds expertly throughout the next few chapters. Within a few pages, I was absolutely riveted.

Cara was likable, and also eerie enough to love. She had her own issues: like her burgeoning feelings for Sam, her ex-stepbrother, and whether or not that'd be incestuous based on their household residency. Like the girl she somehow sees in every picture she's ever taken, but that few people can otherwise remember. Like trying to keep her family safe from "accidental" trips down the stairs. Like knowing that this accident season is set to be the worst.

Her conflicts weren't overpowering though; they were effortlessly interwoven with subplots like the typewriter and the vision of the changelings and her relationships with other characters. There was Alice, with her rocker boyfriend and choppy personality. There was Sam, warm and familiar. There was Bea, a witchy girl who Cara silently longed to be like. The relationships felt both realistic and lithe: lyrical in a strange way that I can't quite put my finger on.

One aspect that I loved about The Accident Season was that it was focused on family. The family, instead of being a harboring ground for secrets, had both a tattered history and plenty of love for each other. They supported each other but also, each member had his or her own demons—those that tore down their brothers and sisters. They'd sit in the living room and tend to their injuries and drink red wine, talking about October and bonfires and legends. This book is a folktale come to life, is the fall season come to life, and that mood kept me captivated.

When I think about this book, my heart starts pounding. I want to read it for the first time over and over and over again. It's exhilarating and gets under your skin. It has all the best qualities of magical realism while still being a satisfying paranormal thrill ride. It's subtle and edgy and absolutely gorgeous.

2024 Update: We've changed the way we've talked about magical realism as a genre over the past few years—for the better, rooting it in a more accurate context of colonialism! So I'd actually call it a supernatural story to be most true nowadays. I do love the earnestness of my early teenage review and how excited I was for this book and how it aligned with my taste.

I wish I could take this book with me, always. I've only just read it in July, but I'll definitely be rereading it in October. The atmosphere is deserving of a gushing review in itself.

The allure of the accident season as a concept drew me in. The magnetism of each character — navigating love and friendship, with the perfect balance between enigmatic and relatable — made me stay. The language is pulsing and alive. It's powerful, whether it's describing the ruins of an old house or the terror of falling off a bridge. The pronounced mood lingers through each page and there's a constant suspense, but it's not exhausting. I think I'd be happy reading this book over and over.

There's a lot going on in The Accident Season but it all fell together perfectly for me. There's some stream-of-consciousness thrown in there, some romance, some friendship, some family. It's remarkably well-balanced. The otherworldly aspects (changelings, unexplained injuries, hallucinations) are set off by mundane conversations of homework, sex, drinking, relationships. There are unanswered questions and yet, it all works in the end.

It's visual and lush. Fears seep into other emotions, and there's a mingling sense of otherness that I ache to read more of. I felt connected to the characters, and yet the mood was still vibrant. It's an atmosphere that's so powerful that it leapt off the page and stayed with me. I haven't been this enthralled by a book or writer since reading Maggie Stiefvater or April Genevieve Tucholke for the first time. I just want to live in it.

For fans of:

The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland; House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland; Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by April Genevieve Tucholke; House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig; Ballad by Maggie Stiefvater; The Wren Hunt by Mary Watson; Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick; The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin.