Our Crooked Hearts

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Nate jumped, eyes going wide. I think he expected to see my mother out there. But it was my neighbor, Billy Paxton. Even though I didn't agree with quite a few of Dana's choices as a mother, I could definitely sympathize with her. I feel like Albert built her character out enough that it was easy to understand her motivations.

How did you not see her? She was standing in the middle of the road.” He paused. “Completely naked.” Every line reads like an incantation, and the result is a book pulsing with magic, one that holds the reader firmly under its spell.” — V. E. Schwab, author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Pulses with a bold, beguiling magic that feels brand new and classic at the same time. I couldn’t put it down." — Karen McManus, author of One of Us Is Lying My best friend lost her mother even earlier. Fee came into the world and the woman who'd carried her stepped out. Death transfigured her into a dark-eyed martyr, their apartment the reliquary where Fee's father tended to her traces. this book was so well thought out & the way it came full circle was So satisfying - i was literally jaw dropping when i realized what was going on. i honestly would read a whole series based on the characters in this book.

Though her previous efforts have been more explicitly fantasy focused—Albert’s The Hazel Wood duology is a delicately layered dark fairytale in which characters from a storybook realm known as the Hinterland are not only alive but capable of crossing into our real world— Our Crooked Hearts is a more contemporary sort of tale, told across two interconnected timelines that are bound by both love and the supernatural. (As well as no small amount of female rage.) When Dana was a teen, she and a couple of friends had a real The Craft-moment happening. I'm not going to say one of them was Nancy, but one of them had some Nancy-leanings.

We stood on a rise above the creek that ran through the trees, which could be shallow as a pan or deep enough to kayak in, depending on the rains. Just now it was somewhere in the middle, waist high and churning along beneath a gibbous moon. I knew it was about that high because the girl we were following was kneeling in it, submerged to her shoulder blades.

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I thought Albert did a great job telling this story. There were a couple of aspects that lost me a bit, some scenes towards the end had a fever dream-type quality to them and that's not necessarily my favorite to see in a narrative. A story told across two timelines and multiple POVs, Our Crooked Hearts is a story of a mother who keeps secrets from her daughter, a daughter who is desperate to figure out who she is, and how their fraught choices indelibly impact one another’s lives. Pulses with a bold, beguiling magic that feels brand new and classic at the same time. I couldn't put it down." - Karen McManus, author of One of Us Is Lying Billy cleared his throat. He was perched tensely on his porch, still watching me. Embarrassed, I lifted a hand. Half of the book is also set in Chicago in (approximately) the 90’s and features teenage witches. The teenage witches in the 90’s piece gave me hardcore nostalgia for The Craft.

Dana has always been perceptive. And the summer she turns sixteen, with the help of her best friend and an ambitious older girl, her gifts bloom into a heady fling with the supernatural. As the trio's aspirations darken, they find themselves speeding toward a violent breaking point. El tema de la magia siempre me ha atraído mucho y al ver este libro quise leerlo inmediatamente, porque no es solo un libro de brujas sino que se compagina con buenas dosis de mentiras y secretos, algo oscuro que se acerca y nos habla de la amistad y la familia, con un pequeño toque de romance y mucho de encontrarse a uno mismo, vamos una mezcla que a cualquiera le dan ganas de devorar. They continue to study the book, to become more powerful and to get more involved in the occult community. All of this leads to a terrible secret Dana has kept for decades. but if i five starred a YA fantasy in the year of our lord 2022, the world might explode. so maybe it's for the universal best. that is not at all where it ended—while many books would be happy to ride that thematic old pony all the way through, here it's only half of the story, and at the crooked heart at the center of this one is the story of a mother and a daughter and the secrets that separate them.

This story was creepy at parts. There are dead bunnies just showing up in driveways and a feeling of being watched by someone or something. There is also the next door neighbor boy that Ivy had one awkward moment with years ago but still hangs on the edge of her mind. Ivy is in a family full of secrets, all of which seem to surround her mom and a big event that happened when her mother was a teen. for the first time in possibly 4 years, i can't stop reading YA fantasy. and i'm...having a good time? My best friend lost her mother even earlier. Free came into the world and the woman who carried her stepped out. Death transfigured her into a dark-eyed martyr, their apartment a reliquary where Fee’s father tended to her traces. Our Crooked Hearts was well written and developed. I loved this fast paced read. I do have to give an applause to the author for making a trip to K-Mart fun. This book has good diversity with LGBT characters and the use of foreign language. I don’t know how Billy can survive with little sleep like that. I was hoping he has some magical powers too. Each chapter ends with a mini cliffhanger so many times I couldn’t put down. I liked the idea of clawing out of the mirror. Some parts of the story were intense and I loved it. Some good and bad parents in this book so it resembles real life well. The romance was light so any young readers could read it. Definitely an interesting read and I recommend everyone to read this book! Ivy is grounded for her troubled night with her ex ( she’s managed to dump his ass) , bleaching her hair, prying around the house to detect more secrets after finding the massacred rabbit at their garden!

This empowers three girls who have felt powerless up until now. There’s a wonderful scene where they are at the lakefront and a couple of jerks start harassing them. They hex one of them so that whenever a vile thought about women enters his mind, insects fly out of his mouth and bite his face.

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My eye went to the darkened second-story windows. One of them lit up a minute later and I looked away, regret and bottom-shelf vodka muddling queasily in my stomach. Time to get in bed, I figured. Before my night found one more way to go to shit. She has her own doubts about her mother’s secret ways to protect her and her brother: anyone who tries to mess with them suffers from consequences. She also caught her mother doing weird things at their garden in the middle of the night, hiding things in their basement. The other thing I liked so much about this novel was that it’s also a book about absentee or bad parents. Ivy’s mother is incredibly distant from her, creating a hurt in her daughter that won’t heal. Fee and Dana’s fathers do their best, but aren’t good parents. The girls are left to run wild, and both their fathers have issues with alcohol and providing an appropriate, stable environment. Fee and Dana also acutely feel the absence of their mothers.