Sarah Hollowell

TW: child abuse, abandonment, gaslighting, manipulation, Stockholm Syndrome, torture, death, murder, gun violence, self-entitled arrogant white male, power-tripping control freak psychopath who needs to be chopped up into bloody little bits
I decided to read a lot of queer fiction this year. Goals.
I cannot express enough my appreciation for the queer rep (including ace), fat girl rep, and disability rep in this book. Love it.

SPOILERS:
I figured out early in the book that Fuckface—I mean show more Frank—is a manipulative control freak. Early in the book, I thought he might be a narcissist with BPD, but eventually he proved to be a psychopath.
Stockholm Syndrome also comes to mind—each girl has some level of it. Elle is a flying monkey with the greatest level of Stockholm Syndrome.
"Timeout" kept having sinister overtones even before the reader see what it means—I kept suspecting it wasn't just sitting quietly in a corner. Sure enough, it's torture.
This book evokes the self-entitlement of power-tripping men who use the talents of women and get credit for them... and who abuse the women in their lives. That reminds me of the history books Women of Ideas by Dale Spender and Pre-Raphaelite Girl Gang by Kirsty Stonell Walker. Abusers, predators, who not only oppress and stunt women’s talent but also take credit for it.
So... this is definitely a high stakes kind of dark fantasy novel. Very dark. Starting a bit before page 300, there’s an infuriating and horrifying scene I found difficult to get through. I ended up skimming forward. Might want to read the sequel to the cozy fantasy Legends & Lattes next, because GRRRRR.

Page 7: Flower magic and a tiny poltergeist. 🌺👻
Page 336: YES, RECLAIM THE WORD “WITCHES”! show less

Super intriguing concept and unlike anything I've ever read before. On the surface it's a horror novel about two teens lost in a corn maze that keeps killing them as they try to escape. But below that it is so much more. Sadie and Logan skip their senior trip to King's Island and decide to drive around aimlessly, a favorite past time of theirs. While they haven't been friends for years, they got really close their senior year of high school and now the pair is inseparable. But there is a lot show more they don't know about each other and this twisty, messed up maze is going to bring a lot to the surface. Can they survive this maze? Can they trust each other? Time bending, heart pounding, generally creepy; this is a standout teen novel. show less

Hooked, right from the start. 2 teens out driving around, ditching a school field trip, stumble on a corn maze. What harm can it be to just go in, especially when it's a secret love of Sadie's. The shoosh of the corn, the cut out path - she loves solving the puzzle of a maze. But it doesn't take long for the two teens to realize this corn maze isn't like every other corn maze.

I loved the shock of each discovery. The first half of the book is filled with fascinating piles of mystery along show more with surprising bodies. Each new discovery was a piece of the puzzle I was trying to see the big picture to.

And I really liked Sadie. She was such a unique character with her insecurities and her previous relationship experience. She felt very real and I liked how she analyzed her surroundings and aimed to solve their current issues. I also really liked Logan. His patience to help Sadie, his attempts to get her to talk, his easily naming what she was too scared to. It was such a great dynamic and I loved these two.

Great creepy Halloween vibe with two adorable characters. This one was so fun, I loved it!

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book. show less

Two teens skip their senior trip to the amusement park and instead just drive around through Indiana cornfields. They find a corn maze and decide to give it a try, and then find themselves trapped in its magical web, dying over and over in a horror-filled time loop until they can solve the puzzle of how to escape.
The story has so much potential to be creepy and inventively cool, but the writing isn’t up to the task and the characters are more annoying than they are interesting. The maze is show more a metaphor for the PTSD that results from emotional abuse, which, again, is a good idea, but the author beats it into the plot until it’s a bloody pulp of a message. show less