Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert Review

Title: Our Crooked Hearts

Author: Melissa Albert

Genre: YA Fantasy

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 352

Release Date: 30 Jun 2022

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Hello fellow booklovers, today I’m sharing my review for Our Crooked Hearts by the bestselling author of The Hazelwood and Tales From The Hinterland, Melissa Albert.

It’s an intoxicatingly eerie and deliciously riveting tale about mothers and daughters, secrets, witches and a whole lot of revenge that (as a self confessed The Haze Wood super fan) I’ve been anticipating since it’s release was announced.

I also want to say a massive thank you to Nina Douglas and Penguin Randomhouse for the sending me this incredible ARC.

Synopsis

SECRETS. LIES. SUPER-BAD CHOICES. WITCHCRAFT. This is Our Crooked Hearts - a gripping mystery crossed with a pitch-dark fantasy from Melissa Albert, global bestselling author of The Hazel Wood.

In our family, we keep our magic close, but our secrets closer . . .

Ivy's summer kicks off with a series of disturbing events. As unnatural offerings appear on her doorstep, she's haunted by fragmented memories from her childhood, suggesting there's more to her mother, Dana, than meets the eye.

Dana's tale starts the year she turns sixteen, when she embarks on a major fling with the supernatural. Too late she realises that the powers she's playing with are also playing with her.

Years after it began, Ivy and Dana's shared story will come down to a reckoning between a mother, a daughter and the dark forces they never should have messed with.

Review

From eerie flashbacks from her childhood to the creepy, unnatural offerings left on her doorstep, Ivy’s summer gets off to a spookily rough start. But it leads Ivy on a journey of discovery… into her mother’s mysteriously vague past and into the fragmented memories of her own.

I absolutely loved every second of this richly imagined and sinisterly delightful masterpiece of a book. As a huge fan of The Hazel Wood and Tales of The Hinterland I was soo unbelievably excited to receive an ARC of it, it was one of my anticipated books of the year and I can say it definitely lived up to my expectations.

I am obsessed with Melissa Albert’s expertly crafted, layered and bewitchingly complex world and her prose is second to none. I absolutely loved the dual POVs which explore both Ivy’s life, both in the present and her memories of her childhood as well as her mothers’ teenage years and her actions and choices which lead to the events that take place in the present.

The characters were well crafted (I really liked both Ivy and her mum, Dana) and I loved the exploration into their mother daughter bond—at first glance Dana appears distant, both physically and emotionally but getting to experience her POV really helps to humanise her and give depth to her character. It also highlights the fact that nothing is ever truly straight forward or black and white, that there’s always more than one side to every story.

The parallels between them both however is startlingly obvious and I loved that it’s their decisions (made decades apart) which ultimately bring them closer together. Ivy spends the first half of the book constantly searching for answers, about why her mum is distant and evasive, why the boy next door seems to hate her and why she feels like a piece of her is missing. Teenage Dana is likewise looking for meaning in her life, something bigger than herself in the life she shares with her temperamental father and best friend Fee.

The plot is intriguingly twisty with soo many nuanced layers, surprises and revelations around every corner and the pacing was amazing. It starts out slow but quickly begins to speed up and escalate as the story and action unfolds, creating a truly apprehensive yet utterly unputdownable experience.

Overall, this was an absolutely incredible read that I highly recommend to dark urban fantasy lovers and fans of witchy books. If you’ve ever read any of Albert’s books you’ll know how vividly immersive and masterful her storytelling can be, and if you’re new then your in for a wildly riveting and utterly addictive ride in this richly atmospheric, paranormal mystery imbued with magic, mayhem and sinister surprises.

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

About The Author

Melissa Albert is the New York Times and indie bestselling author of the Hazel Wood series and Our Crooked Hearts, and a former bookseller and founder of the Barnes & Noble Teen Blog. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and included in the New York Times’ list of Notable Children’s Books. She enjoys swimming pool tourism, genre mashups, and living in Brooklyn with her hilarious husband and magnificently goofy son.

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