Your Blood, My Bones

[cornerofmadness]

Your Blood, My Bones by Kelly Andrew

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Solid 4.5 read for me. It was so close to 5 stars but I tripped up on some of the unreliable narrator stuff and a bit of an unbalance in the story but honestly that was mostly minor (and that's from someone who usually dislikes unreliable narrators)

Wyatt has returned to her family home in rural Maine. Her father has died and she plans to burn the farm to the ground. Her mother had taken her away a handful of years ago leaving Wyatt angry with her father. But when she arrives, she finds her childhood friend, Peter, chained up in the basement, suspended from the ceiling, left for dead. Only Peter can't die. Her family and the magical cult that grew up around them has been ritualistically murdering Peter for more years than Wyatt can wrap her head around.

Peter (Pedyr) should have died back in the colonial days but his father made a deal with the darkness in the woods and he was revived, made immortal but his deaths feed the beast as well. They're trapped together. Peter is now as old as he's ever been allowed to get (late teens)

The story is told in alternating points of view (his and hers) going back and forth between present day and their childhood along with the third kid in their trio: James, the wealthy boarding school kid who summered there with them. Both boys had their crushes on her. Wyatt had no idea the destruction she wrought when she was taken away.

Now the monsters in the wood want out into the world and with Wyatt's father dead and his magic failing, it falls to her and the boys to stop it. Only there's something wrong with her magic and she has no desire to learn what her father did to keep back the dark (hint, the title of this book is fitting).

I think, for me, one of the scariest parts of horror as a genre is there is no guarantees everyone will make it to the end. In romances you know they'll get their happy ever after. In mysteries, the sleuth will solve the case. In horror, we expect people to die (the last girl isn't a trope for nothing). Truthfully no one should survive this book. The horror both interesting and just that dangerous.

It's not the first time (even in the last few months) I've read the horror from the woods. That's a trope in and of itself, but it is done very well here. I very much liked Peter. Half the time I wanted to slap Wyatt hard but she does rise to the occasion. What I tripped over, isn't so much the unreliable narrator (both are) in so much as around mid way we learn that Wyatt is magic on both side and boom, suddenly there's this whole other side of the family who becomes important with now warning and that bugged me.

Overall, I did really love this (and wow, that cover!)



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