Review--Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert

 

Secrets. Lies. Bad choices. Dangerous magic. . . . This is Our Crooked Hearts, a contemporary fantasy "so precise and enthralling that the only explanation is that Albert herself is a witch" (Booklist, starred review)

On the way home from a party, seventeen-year-old Ivy and her soon-to-be ex nearly run over a nude young woman standing in the middle of a tree-lined road. It’s only the first in a string of increasingly eerie events and offerings: a dead rabbit in the driveway, a bizarre concoction buried by her mother in the backyard, a box of childhood keepsakes hidden in her parents’ closet safe. Most unsettling of all, corroded recollections of Ivy and her enigmatic mother’s past resurface, with the help of the boy next door.

What if there’s more to Ivy’s mother than meets the eye? And what if the supernatural forces she messed with during her own teen years have come back to haunt them both? Ivy must grapple with these questions and more if she’s going to escape the darkness closing in.

Straddling Ivy’s contemporary suburban town and her mother’s magic-drenched 1990s Chicago, this bewitching and propulsive story rockets towards a conclusion guaranteed to keep readers up all night.

 

 

Melissa Albert’s Our Crooked Hearts was a dark and mysterious tale about witchcraft, family, and secrets…the deadly kind! I didn’t know much about this book going in other than that it was an Albert book and I had to read it! I was pleasantly surprised with the story overall, but yet, found myself wishing for a little bit more spookiness. But it was still a pleasant read.

The story is told in two points of view, from two different timelines. We have Ivy, who is our present day main character and then we have Dana who is Ivy’s mother as a teenager, set some years back in the past before she had Ivy (obviously). On Ivy’s first day of summer she and her boyfriend were out late partying and encounter a strange, naked girl in the woods. They had a fight, broke up, and then Ivy comes home and gets irrevocably grounded for an unknown amount of time.

We start to see Ivy’s mom acting a little unusual, which from context, is weirder than her normal quirks. We get chapters of Dana’s past when she was a teenager and got herself involved with witchcraft along with her best friend, Fee. They met a girl who introduced to them to this powerful side of life and we slowly watch as the consequences unfold.

Meanwhile, Ivy is trying to uncover what her mother’s secret is and a possible explanation to some weirdness that’s been going around, especially where it concerns her cute neighbor, Billy, who seems to be holding back on something important regarding Ivy.

This book was pretty chockful of secrets! It did make for interesting reading, but I’ll admit sometimes the back and forth chapters with Ivy’s present and her mother’s past, made things a little confusing. This is definitely something I would recommend reading in one day if at all possible as SO much happens within these 300 or so pages, but with the changing timelines, reading it over the course of a few days can make it a bit confusing.

The mysterious element was pretty good. It was eerie, but I was really hoping for more spookiness than what we got. I realized quickly that we were dealing with witches, so actual “spookiness” might be harder to obtain. I just wished there was something more though, maybe more emphasis on the mystery element.

The ending did feel a bit rushed. After everything that had happened, all the time spent in the past, I guess I just thought the ending would have had a little more oomph.  I’ve come to realize that I tend to set really high expectations for Albert’s books and while I come out enjoying them, I tend to expect something a bit more happening than what does happen. This is likely more of a me thing than anything else.

The story was still lush with magic and woven in secrets and intrigue. I did enjoy seeing the secrets unravel and Ivy uncover these secrets. I also enjoyed the little bits of romance that were woven in as well. They don’t take over the story at all and are merely just there. They didn’t feel like an add on, at least not to me. You could kind of sense there was something to Ivy and Billy’s past as well, and we do get this resolution as well.

All in all, Our Crooked Hearts was an entertaining mystery. It wasn’t without its flaws, in my opinion. I had hoped for a little more spookiness, a little more something weird is going on, than what we got. But I still found it to be a delightful and entertaining story! I will definitely be reading more of Albert’s books as they have a unique sort of magic to them and I have always enjoyed that aspect to her stories without a doubt!

 

Overall Rating 3/5 stars