About The Book
A teen girl disappears from her small town deep in the bayou, where magic festers beneath the surface of the swamp like water rot, in this chilling debut supernatural thriller for fans of Natasha Preston, Karen McManus, and Rory Power. In a town where secrets lurk just below the surface, and where a murderer is on the loose, nobody can be presumed innocent—and La Cachette’s dark and shallow lies may just rip the town apart.
Buy The Book: https://amzn.to/3WGq05r

My Rating

This book is a very interesting take on the YA mystery genre, because it has a magical realism element to it. In the book, Grey returns to La Cachette, Louisiana to spend the summer in the same place that her best friend, Elora, disappeared from, 6 month earlier.

In La Cachette everyone has some kind of magical ability, from being a love psychic to an empath. However, Grey, just now seventeen years old, is learning to discover her own gift. As the protagonist of the story, Grey was just okay. She wasn’t horrible or unlikable, but I wouldn’t say I loved following her either.

In my opinion, this book is way more mystery based, because there were a lot of secrets going on. The mystery of Elora disappearance did keep me interested, but not enough to where I couldn’t put the book down.

“Welcome to La Cachette, Louisiana Elevation 3 Ft. Population 106 Living Souls.”

For me, the story as a whole just didn’t work. The psychic aspect of the story was a bit weird, and La Cachette was a very twisted place. There’s also another mystery from the past that somewhat ties into the current mystery. And, there’s a romance as well. It just had a lot going on.

My biggest con was the writing. I do understand that this is a debut novel, so I am trying not to judge it too heavily. But, the book didn’t come to life for me, and man, was it slow moving. I wanted the plot to pick up, but it never really did.

Overall, the ending was solid and I do think the author has the potential to write something really good. Nevertheless, I want to say the this book isn’t comparable to Karan M. McManus’ works (as it states on GoodReads), which might be a good thing for some people. Also, the story is pretty sad, and there are some triggering things talked about in this book. One being the murder of children.

Remember that StoryGraph is a great tool for finding trigger warnings for books. Don’t forget to show your support by giving the blog a follow.

Until The Next Chapter,
Bunny