Book Tour: Bumps In The Night by Amalie Howard

Welcome to my stop on the book tour for Bumps In The Night by Amalie Howard, organized by TBR and Beyond Book Tours (https://tbrandbeyondtours.com/).  Check out the book’s synopsis below!

*Thank you, TBR and Beyond Book Tours and Delacorte Press for the finished copy of this book for the tour.

Bumps In The Night

by Amalie Howard

Pub Date: February 20, 2024 (Delacorte Press)

Genre: Middle Grade Fantasy/Horror

Book Links:

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound

The middle grade horror debut from USA Today bestselling author Amalie Howard in which a girl stays with her grandmother in Trinidad for the summer and discovers that she comes from a long line of witches.

Thirteen-year-old Darika Lovelace is in big trouble. The kind of trouble that means she’s being sent off to her grandmother in the Caribbean. She should be grateful, but instead she’s angry. Angry at her dad and step-mom for sending her away for an entire summer. Angry at her mom who went away and never came back.

But the island is definitely not what she remembers! The minute she steps off the plane, strange things start happening, including being stalked by a baby iguana. When she meets a ragtag group of children on her Granny’s estate, she knows they are not what they seem, but after they promise to take her to her long-lost mom, she leaps at the chance.

Thrust into an incredible adventure involving strange monsters, a supernatural silk cotton tree, and a mysterious maze, soon the truth about her unique magical roots comes to light. She’s the island’s only hope, but unless she learns to believe in magic, all will be lost.

AMALIE HOWARD is a USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling novelist. Always Be My Duchess was one of Cosmopolitan’s 30 Best Romance Books of 2022 and The Beast of Beswick was one of Oprah Daily’s 24 Best Historical Romance Novels to Read. She is also the author of several award-winning young adult novels. A Caribbean-born AAPI writer, her books have been featured in The Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly, and Seventeen Magazine. When she’s not writing, she can usually be found reading, being the president of her one-woman Harley Davidson motorcycle club, or power-napping. She lives in Colorado with her family.

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Facebook 

Follow the Tour:  https://tbrandbeyondtours.com/2023/12/29/tour-schedule-bumps-in-the-night-by-amalie-howard/

Book Reviews: The Bad Ones + My Throat an Open Grave

 

I recently read The Bad Ones and My Throat an Open Grave.  Check out my thoughts on these two young adult horror/fantasies below.  Spoiler alert: these were just average reads for me.

*eARCs provided by the publisher via NetGalley for review.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.  This post contains affiliate links.  I am an Amazon and Bookshop.org affiliate so I may receive a small commission (at no cost to you) if you make a purchase through one of my links

The Bad Ones

By Melissa Albert

Pub Date: February 20, 2024 (Flatiron Books)

Genre: YA Fantasy, Horror

Setting: Illinois, small town, present day

*Check out content warnings here

Book Links:

Goodreads | StoryGraph | Amazon | Bookshop

Also by this author:  The Hazel Wood; Our Crooked Hearts

Book Blurb (Goodreads):

In the course of a single winter’s night, four people vanish without a trace across a small town. Nora’s estranged best friend, Becca, is one of the lost. As Nora tries to untangle the truth of Becca’s disappearance, she discovers a darkness in her town’s past, as well as a string of coded messages Becca left for her to unravel. These clues lead Nora to a piece of local folklore: a legendary goddess of forgotten origins who played a role in Nora and Becca’s own childhood games...

Review:

I read Melissa Albert’s Hazel Wood series a while back and I liked those books so I was excited to read her latest young adult fantasy.  I was really intrigued by the premise of this book- four people vanish from the same small town in one night, the main character’s best friend is one of the people that goes missing, and there’s this strange town lore involving a creepy childhood game.  It sounded like a book I would really enjoy.  While I did like Albert’s writing, I thought the story was not that memorable.  To be honest, I read this a month ago and I don’t remember much about it.  I do remember I was left with many questions by the end and I was not a fan of the ending.  Also, the characters seemed really young.  I think younger teens would enjoy this book.  Unfortunately, this book was not for me.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

______________

My Throat an Open Grave

By Tori Bovalino

Pub Date: February 20, 2024 (Page Street)

Genre: YA Fantasy, Folk Horror 

Setting: Pennsylvania small town, present day

*Check out content warnings here

Book Links: 

Goodreads | StoryGraph | Amazon | Bookshop

Also by this author:  The Devil Makes Three; Not Good For Maidens

Book Blurb (Goodreads):

Labyrinth meets folk horror in this darkly romantic tale of a girl who wishes her baby brother away to the Lord of the Wood. Growing up in the small town of Winston, Pennsylvania feels like drowning. Leah goes to church every Sunday, works when she isn’t at school, and takes care of her baby brother, Owen. Like every girl in Winston, she tries to be right and good and holy. If she isn’t the Lord of the Wood will take her, and she’ll disappear like so many other girls before her.

Review:

This book started off strong.  The main character, Leah’s, baby brother is kidnapped and taken by the Lord of the Wood.  Leah has to get her brother back and no girl has ever returned once leaving the town.  This small town is led by these religious zealots and the whole vibe of the town is creepy af.  I was definitely getting The Village vibes in the beginning of this story.  I was hoping this would be a mysterious, horror-filled book, but it ended up being way too romance/crush/googly-eyes heavy and I just didn’t care what happened to any of the characters by the end.  There were some paranormal moments that I liked, but overall, this was a disappointing read for me.  I do think a fantasy loving teen or fans of Labyrinth will devour this book though.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

___________

Thanks For Reading!

Book Reviews: Island Witch + A Haunting in the Arctic

 

I recently won a giveaway for egalleys of Island Witch and A Haunting in the Arctic!  Check out my mini reviews of these 2 Berkley titles below.

*eARCs provided by the publisher via NetGalley for review.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.  This post contains affiliate links.  I am an Amazon and Bookshop.org affiliate so I may receive a small commission (at no cost to you) if you make a purchase through one of my links.

Island Witch 

By Amanda Jayatissa

Pub Date: February 20, 2024 (Berkley)

Genre: Gothic Horror, Historical Fiction

Setting: Sri Lanka, early 19th century 

*Check out content warnings here

Book Links:

Goodreads | StoryGraph | Amazon | Bookshop

Also by this author: My Sweet Girl; You’re Invited 

Book Blurb  (Goodreads):

Inspired by Sri Lankan folklore, award-winning author Amanda Jayatissa turns her feverish, Gothic-tinged talents to late 19th century Sri Lanka where the daughter of a traditional demon-priest—relentlessly bullied by peers and accused of witchcraft herself—tries to solve the mysterious attacks that have been terrorizing her coastal village.

 

Review:  

Island Witch sounded amazing and right up my alley, and also just look at that gorgeous cover.  I was so excited to read this book, but this ended up being an average read for me.  I’ll start with what I liked about this book: I loved the setting and the gothic vibes.  The atmosphere was very foreboding and ominous.  I thought the main character, Amara, was a pretty strong and interesting character.  She definitely had to deal with a lot throughout the book.  The mystery was intriguing and there were some paranormal moments that I liked.  

Here’s what I didn’t like about this book: the story was slow moving and I felt like not much happened until later in the book.  There were some horrible characters (mainly male characters) that I absolutely despised and there were parts in this story that made me so angry.  This was a very bleak read with some brutal moments, so make sure to check out the trigger warnings before reading this one. 

Overall, Island Witch was too slow paced and bleak for my liking, but I loved the gothic atmosphere.  I would recommend this book to lovers of slower paced historical gothic fiction.  

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Book Tour: Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear by Robin Wasley

 

Welcome to my stop on the book tour for Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear by Robin Wasley, organized by TBR and Beyond Tours (https://tbrandbeyondtours.com/).  Check out the book’s synopsis below!

*Thank you, TBR and Beyond Tours and Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers for the ARC copy of this book for the tour.

Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear

By Robin Wasley

Pub Date: February 13, 2024 (Simon & Schuster)

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy 

Book Links:

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound

A painfully average teen’s life is upended by a magical apocalypse in this darkly atmospheric and sweepingly romantic novel perfect for fans of The Raven Boys , Buffy the Vampire Slayer , and The Rest of Us Just Live Here .

High school is hard enough to survive without an apocalypse to navigate.

Sid Spencer has always been the most normal girl in her abnormal hometown, a tourist trap built over one of the fault lines that seal magic away from the world. Meanwhile, all Sid has to deal with is hair-ruining humidity, painful awkwardness, being one of four Asians in town, and her friends dumping her when they start dating each other—just days after one of the most humiliating romantic rejections faced by anyone, ever, in all of history.

Then someone kills one of the Guardians who protect the seal. The earth rips open and unleashes the magic trapped inside. Monsters crawl from the ground, no one can enter or leave, and the man behind it all is roaming the streets with a gang of violent vigilantes. Suddenly, Sid’s life becomes a lot less ordinary. When she finds out her missing brother is involved, she joins the remaining Guardians, desperate to find him and close the fault line for good.

Fighting through hordes of living corpses and uncontrollable growths of forest, Sid and a ragtag crew of would-be heroes are the only thing standing between their town and the end of the world as they know it. Between magic, murderers, and burgeoning crushes, Sid must survive being a perfectly normal girl caught in a perfectly abnormal apocalypse.

Only—how can someone so ordinary make it in such an extraordinary world?

Robin Wasley is a YA fantasy writer with a soft spot for orphans, found families, and funny girls with no special skills who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. She grew up in a family of adoptees, never truly seeing herself reflected in the books she devoured. As an adult, when she saw an Asian American girl on the cover of a YA book for the first time, she cried.

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads 

Follow The Tour:  https://tbrandbeyondtours.com/2023/12/29/tour-schedule-dead-things-are-closer-than-they-appear-by-robin-wasley/