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
