Shallow Graves

I started Shallow Graves hoping for something original and dark but ready to be disappointed because I’m decades away from the target audience for YA novels. Kali Wallace exceeded my hopes and gave me a book that was original, thoughtful, beautifully written and where the darkness was laced with the possibility of a kind of happiness.

The first thing that struck me about Shallow Graves was the strength of the writing. I'm going to go through the first few paragraphs to show you what I mean.

The opening line is a classic:

"The first time I killed a man it was an accident."

That grabbed my attention both because it made me wonder how you kill a man by accident and because it sounded like there was a next time and that the next time wasn't show more accidental.

Then I learned about the man she killed:

"He didn't have any identification on him. He was white, probably in his mid-fifties. Average build, average height. Smoker. No tattoos or distinguishing scars. His fingerprints matched those found at a thirty-year-old crime scene in North Dakota; a family murder, both parents, son and two daughters, all killed one night at the dinner table. No one was ever arrested."

I loved the disappassionate way the man's true nature was revealed. He's the first monster in a book full of monsters. His low-key introduction was the first indication that, once your eyes are opened to them, you'll find monsters everywhere.

By the end of the next three paragraphs, I was hooked.

The first describes how the dead man was found:

"A real estate agent with the unfortunate name of Poppy Treasure found him three days after I killed him. She opened the back door of an empty house to air it out before her clients arrived and there he was, facedown, on the lawn, dead. The police released a description and pleaded for information, but nobody came forward. Nobody admitted to seeing him. They didn't even know how he had gotten to Evanston, much less how or why he had ended up dead in the yard of a foreclosed house in the Backlot. There wasn't a mark on him. The Medical Examiner blamed the death on a heart attack but the "unusual circumstances" of where he was found made them suspicious."

I admired the way this paragraphbuilds the tension and the weirdness factor while starting to establish an intimacy between the reader on the narrator, That "There wasn't a mark on him" showed me that this was no simple accidental killing and the "unusual circumstances" told me that I didn't have all the facts yet, while making me keen to learn them. The remark about the real estate agent's name adds a dash of personality and humour that made me want to like the narrator rather than think of them as a killer.

The next paragraph increased my empathy and again pushed up the weirdness.

"They meant my grave. There was a hole in the backyard of that empty house, about five feet long and eighteen inches deep. and in that hole they found hair, blood, fibres. Everything I left behind was too degraded for identification purposes. That's what you become when you die but you don't manage to do it properly: too degraded."

I love how that paragraph confirms that the narrator is dead, which is strange enough, and also suggests that they feel some blame for not dying "properly" and ending up in a "degraded" state.

The next paragraph established the relationship I, the reader, was going to have with the narrator and made me keen to learn more:

"This is how I killed him."

This sentence told me that I would be Breezy's confessor/confidant and that she was telling me her story so that she could understand it better.

I admired Kali Wallace's ability to write intriguing, thoughtful prose that was convincingly the voice of a seventeen-year-old girl. It was the quality of that voice that kept Breezy Lin's humanity at the heart of the story.

One of the things that makes Shallow Graves work so well is that Breezy's main challenge is to work out not just what she has become but who she is going to be. When she rises from her grave, a year after her death, she makes her first kill on instinct. She doesn't understand how or why she does what she does. She doesn't know what she's become.

The traditional horror route would have been to cast Breezy as a revenant version of an Onryō, rising from her grave driven by a hunger for vengeance against men who murder women. Breezy has the power to do this. She can feel the urge to use that power growing inside her. What made Shallow Graves powerful for me was that Breezy resists this urge, not because it's wrong but because she's mourning the life that her murderer ripped away from her. She knows she can't go back to her family but she aches to be with them. She knows that her long-held dream of being an astronaut, which she's trained for her whole life, is now out of her reach. She knows she can't be the woman she would have become and the loss devastates her.

Her first thought is to seek a cure for what happened to her so she can find a way back to being the girl her murderer destroyed. This leads her on a journey to find people who are or who understand the supernatural. She falls into the clutches of a cult that promises to cure her. She finds allies in unlikely places. She goes through an ordeal finally to meet with a supernatural being who can tell her what she is and how she can be cured.

Some of this journey worked well, especially the early contact with the cult but I felt that the plot meandered a little too much in the middle section of the book. I loved the ending and the choices that Breezy made.

Shallow Graves isn't horrifying in the slasher/gorefest kind of way. Its horror comes from understanding how much destruction men cause when they kill women and girls and how often they do it and that so many of them get away with it. For me, Breezy's sense of loss, even after she rises from her grave into a second life, had the biggest emotional impact. show less

Horror With a Heart

(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic copy of this book for review through Edelweiss. Trigger warning for violence, including rape culture.)

Mom and Dad would be so disappointed. They had always told us there was no such thing as ghosts.

###

There's something Karen Garrow once said about the fate of the universe. It was on one of her television shows, an episode I watched a dozen times on the basement TV. All of us, she said, all of us and all of everything that had ever existed and ever would exist, it was all made up of matter that formed in the very first moments of the universe, and it would all last until the very end. The atoms would decay, the particles would break apart, everything would disintegrate show more and shatter until it was unrecognizable - too degraded - but that would take so many billions and billions of years we didn't even have words for time scales that large. Everything had come from the same hot explosion and everything would end in the same empty darkness. It had nothing to do with what we believed or what we wanted or how desperately we needed to reassure ourselves that the brief moment in which we lived meant anything at all. None of it would matter in the end.

And Karen smiled her playful smile, and she said, "But it isn't the end yet. It matters now, everything we have, for as long as we can hold onto it."

###

I was so fucking tired of men deciding whether or not I got to go on existing for another day.

###

One minute, seventeen-year-old Breezy Lin is at a high school party; the next, she wakes up in a shallow grave, in a vacant house just a few blocks from her house, a creepy man haunted by a creepier shadow eagerly digging her free. She reaches for him, pulls...and something in him snaps. The coroner's report will list the cause of death as a heart attack, but Breezy killed him. Just like he killed that family of four, gathered around a dinner table, so many years ago.

A year has passed since her death, and during this time Breezy has morphed into something unnatural. Raised by magic - and the deaths of thousands of birds, every single one within a two-mile radius of her grave - Breezy is a revenant. An animated corpse, resurrected from death to hunt the living. Breezy can spot killers, who wear their guilt like a cloak; their sin calls to hear, awakens her hunger, and after she eats, she will carry their ghoulish memories with her, always. Unable to go home, Breezy starts hitchhiking across the country, seeking vengeance for other murdered souls.

But not for her. Never for her, because Breezy has no memories of her death. Her murder remains a mystery.

Shallow Graves starts out a lot like The Girl From the Well, with Breezy as a younger, Americanized version of the three-hundred-year old yuurei Okiku (who I absolutely adored). But Breezy only gets two bodies under her belt before she's kidnapped by a evangelical cult that hunts monsters. Well, "hunts" isn't exactly right: Pastor Willow's father hunted them, while he finds, kidnaps (if necessary), and "cures" them - all with the help of the biggest, baddest, most ancient monster of them all, a cloven-hoofed beast they affectionately call Mother and keep imprisoned in an abandoned mine.

Desperate to be "normal" again, Breezy is torn between hope and realism. A newbie to the world of vamps and ghouls (and werewolves, and banshees, and nightmares, and ghosts, and maybe even mermaids; the monsters in this world are varied and imaginative and if there's a sequel, I really hope we'll meet more of them!), she doesn't know down from up, let alone who to trust. With the help of a fellow captive named Rain; Ingrid the witch; brothers Zeke and Jake; and Violet, one of Pastor Willow's success stories, Breezy must learn to discern the guilty from the innocent; the monstrous from the mundane. (Pro tip: species membership is largely irrelevant.)

Shallow Graves is a near-perfect mix of horror, fantasy, dark comedy, science geekiness, and feminist fiction. While horror is definitely the dominant genre, Wallace suffuses the story - Breezy's observations in particular - with a wry, morbid sense of humor. (To wit: “The first rule of cannibal mermaid fight club is don’t talk about cannibal mermaid fight club.”) Though she's obviously a smart, witty kid, her voice still sounds eminently believable. I pretty much fell in love with Breezy; she's wonderfully nerdy, yet confident and comfortable in her own skin, brimming with ambition and confidence. When she wakes up undead, she adopts a rational approach to understanding her condition, complete with neat little lists of ways she cannot die laid out in her stolen NASA notebook. As a fellow list-maker, I can relate.

Breezy is also refreshingly socially aware, which is what gives the story its feminist/social justice bent. A biracial kid - Irish on her mom's side, Chinese on her dad's - Breezy is no stranger to racist microagressions. She's also sexually active in a society that labels girls who enjoy sex "sluts" - and denigrates them as "prudes" should they abstain. Shortly before she's killed, Breezy is the victim of slut-shaming rumors...rumors that would have been overshadowed by later summer events, had she not gone missing (including one of her classmates coming out as trans). Plus she's bisexual, and totally cool with it.

There are so many wonderful feminist details in this book, I can't even (!). They're subtle enough that readers are apt to overlook many of them if they're not paying attention. For example, Breezy's mom has a different last name from her kids, suggesting that she kept her name when she married. Breezy is delightfully geeky; she dreams of being an astronaut, went to space camp as a kid, and reads Scientific American for funsies. Breezy waxes poetic on the nature of the cosmos - much to my joy - in what are some of the loveliest passages in the book; some I even set aside to add to my not-a-religion religion cannon. (Think: Octavia Butler's Parables duology.)

And Breezy isn't alone: Breezy's mother studied neuroscience at MIT, and her mom's best friend Karen Garrow (also biracial, and Breezy's first girl crush) is a physicist who often appears on television shows about physics and astronomy. "She was the one they interviewed when they wanted to prove that science was for minorities and young women as much as old white men." Breezy is not wanting for badass female role models.

I also love that Wallace set Breezy up with a prophecy, a fate, a destiny - one which Breezy obstinately decided to ignore, at least for the time being. She will not be a slave to your predictions, yo! The ending is pretty much perfect, though I do hope Breezy crosses paths with her killer again. An annual pants-wetting is the least she owes him/her, methinks.

Wallace frequently references pop culture, and the various elements of the story remind me of some of my favorite books and television shows: Being Human; Supernatural (especially the Winchesters' evolving concept of good and evil, human vs. monstrous); Rachel Vincent's Menagerie (the cryptids!); Rin Chupeco's The Girl From the Well, which I already mentioned, and its follow-up, The Suffering; there are even shades of Buffy here, from Pastor Willow's name to the sly humor and its celebration of smart women. I haven't read any of Holly Black's stuff yet, but the story is definitely in the same wheelhouse as Nova Ren Suma's The Walls Around Us.

A strong 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 where necessary. I had hoped to see more righteous vengeance (and monsters!), but the story's pretty great anyway.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2016/01/25/shallow-graves-by-kali-wallace/ show less

Breezy Lin remembers leaving the party, kind of drunk and stinging of hurt, but nothing until she wakes up in a shallow grave. She's also confused about the dead man laying by her grave who died when she touched him saw the darkness within. Her heartbeat also isn't a constant like it has been her entire life. She decides to look for answers, hitchhiking with all types along the way and only killing the hostile ones happy to take advantage of a young girl on the road. At a random rest-stop, an intense boy gives her a flyer for a religious homeless shelter. Thinking (wrongly) that she has nothing else to lose, she ventures into their trap. The events following through her into a world she never knew about, of creatures of myth and legend show more and the dubious humans who want to either control or destroy them.

Shallow Graves is a dark tale of revenge, but it also has a fairy tale undercurrent that sets it apart from the usual supernatural horror fare. The story takes mythical monsters like zombies, banshees, and revenants and makes them into everyday people except for their longevity, their diet, and their power. They have all the normal problems of human life like income, food, shelter, and all that with the added concern of their special diets, their automatic actions of their nature plus wizards and humans alike hunting them down and killing them. For example, Breezy meets zombie brothers whose parents were killed. They live in a small apartment and struggle to get by. Plus they have to figure out how to get corpses to their house to eat on a regular basis without attracting unwanted attention. These people who are marginalized and don't quite fit into society like the minorities, LGBT, and other disenfranchised people in our society. The cult in the story doesn't seek to destroy these people, but to "fix" them to how the cult thinks they should be: without the abilities that they were born or reborn with that are a core part of themselves. Afterwards, these "fixed" people are shown to be shells of who they once were at best. This practice is akin to typically religious programs to brainwash the unsuspecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people into at least acting like they are heterosexual or cisgender to be what the perpetrators of this abuse think is normal. This metaphor is well done as it shows problems with our own society and builds a unique world with complex characters.

Breezy Lin is a revenant, a creature I haven't seen recently. She's basically a vengeful undead drawn to those who have murdered someone. Their sins are in a dark aura around them. The more people they have killed, the larger and darker the aura is. Her ability also includes latching onto this aura and pulling, usually causing death. Because she's undead, she can take devastating amounts of damage without dying and heal in a short time. She also has remarkable strength and speed. After waking up after a year of being dead, Breezy goes home only to find her family gone. She decides to hitchhike around, stealing from the evil murderers until she runs into the cult. We get some glimpses to her life beforehand: she was interested in science, specifically space, and wanted to be an astronaut. This is also shown in her scientific way of evaluating herself objectively to find out her abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. She was a fairly normal high school teenager with a focused interest. The day she died, she had a fight with her best friend because of an attempted drunken kiss. Her friend slaps her, disgusted, and Breezy runs out. It's interesting that the first rejection of Breezy's sexuality ends in her death and makes her a target for this cult bent on making the noncomformists normal. Breezy Lin sounded and acted like a real person with a delightfully morbid sense of humor. After having so much direction to her life before she embraced wandering around wherever people would take her. The story itself also wanders and doesn't take a linear journey, but it feels more like real life. Everything isn't tied up with a bow at the end.

Shallow Graves is an engaging horror novel with a side of fantasy. I was a little weary when it started out a lot like Kendare Blake's short story On the I-5, but it branched out and became something wholly different. I love how the characters break down a lot of sexist ideas: Breezy is into and successful at science as are other women in the narrative. Breezy is faced with a predestined fate near the end of the novel and she chooses to do something else. Nothing is set in stone and she doesn't care about what anyone else wants. One of my favorite parts of the book is that whatever someone was born with is pretty irrelevant in regard to being good or evil; it's their actions that make the determination between the two. The humans end up looking way more monstrous than the monsters. I want to explore the world more and see her take on other supernatural creatures. I hope there will be a second book. Either way, I will keep an eye out for whatever else Kali Wallace writes. show less

I have no idea what I expected from [b:Shallow Graves|22663629|Shallow Graves|Kali Wallace|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1434989166s/22663629.jpg|42162445] but I was pleasantly surprised.

Breezy Lin was a great narrator. I found it easy to get into her mindset and follow her story without thinking "but why?" I can't get enough of interesting perspective characters who are neither white nor straight (Breezy is biracial and bisexual).

Kali Wallace has created a really interesting story and a sinister world in Shallow Graves, fantastical in a modern way, mixing standard paranormal monsters into every day life.

The story doesn't have the strongest plot, but in some ways, I liked that. Because Breezy is new to this paranormal world of show more witches and monsters beyond her wildest imagination, learning along with Breezy is interesting in and of itself.

Rating: 8.5/10
Gay-0-meter: 5/10 (there's no romance, but Breezy's bisexuality is touched upon at several points) show less

Review courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy.
allthingsuf.com

Breezy is many things. She could be described variously as a teenager, undead, biracial, bisexual... And yet, she is most strongly and ferociously herself. She is a scientist. She is disciplined. She truly is the type of person who devotes herself to a profession and works from a young age to reach the stars.

And it is this beautifully drawn depth of character that allows the reader to immerse themselves into this dark and unknown world alongside our own. The realism of her experiences make even the most fantastical elements of her life emotionally resonant. Breezy's scientific mindset that allows her to catalog and explore her undeath, even as she tries to process the show more unimaginable grief of her own death. The losses pile up, her family, her professional aspirations, her future... all either lost forever or changed so radically as to be unrecognizable. The mundane mystery of her own death felt harder to believe than Breezy's grief that she will never become an astronaut, as somehow the emotional state of an undead teenage becomes more visceral than the petty evils that do exist in real life.

While Breezy explores the world around her through a scientific lense, SHALLOW GRAVES doesn't feel dry or clinical. Rather, this oh so human attempt to build a rational concept of this new dark, unexpected world made the most fantastical elements feel real. While the world building has strengths and weaknesses, the main character rock solid. I enjoyed this book, but above and beyond that, I loved Breezy.

Sexual content: References to sex. show less

Review Link: http://wp.me/p5aHOQ-GV

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Shallow Graves starts off with a strong, spine-tingling beginning that had me hooked almost instantly. When I first discovered this chilling debut, I knew I had to get my hands on it. It’s a semi-new experience for me, deviating from the romance genre, so I am still nervous when I pick up a book that has no romance plot at all. Fortunately, Shallow Graves sucked me in so fast, I didn’t even miss the fact that there was no romance. I was invested from the first sentence.

Breezy wakes from the dead, a year after her murder, with no memory of who killed show more her and some new, deadly abilities that hammers in the feeling that she has risen from the grave a monster. With no hope to resuming her life with her loving family, she starts off on a listless and arduous journey to find out what she has become and hopefully regain her humanity. Along the way, Breezy discovers she’s not the only monster out there – or even the only kind of monster – and soon discovers a group of even more monstrous humans.

On the day I came back to life, hundreds of birds within a two-mile radius dropped dead with no warning and a freak storm covered the city with frost.

Shallow Graves was a haunting and gripping read. It continued to tug my heart-strings and I even found myself teary-eyed on occasion. The weird paranormal vibe didn’t take away from the fact that this is a story told from the prospective of a murdered teenage girl who loved life and was going places until her life was snuffed out. In fact, I really enjoyed the paranormal aspect to the book. I was also pleasantly surprised by the underlying themes on morality, revenge, and forgiveness. It gave this young adult horror layers that I found fascinating.

And that plot twist at the end! I should have seen it coming, but I was distracted by all those paranormal creatures. I see what you did there, Wallace.

Shallow Graves was a unique, utterly bizarre but enchanting debut that fans of horror and paranormal mysteries would enjoy. I can’t wait to see what other unique horrors Kali Wallace has in store for me! I will certainly be reading more from her. show less

This was tough to rate. While I enjoyed it, it just wasn't what I expected. I liked the beginning and the end but..it (slightly) lost my interest somewhere in the middle. It seemed to be going one way then branched off in a different direction only to return to the original path at the end and there were still a few loose ends left over.
Despite all of that, I will say that it is a compelling read and the lack of romance was refreshing.
Shallow Graves certainly does deliver on the creep factor and has enough mystery to keep you entertained. Plus the cover is beautiful so it's worth it!