Thank you to the author, publishers Hot Key Books and NetGalley UK for access to this as an advance reader’s ebook. This is an honest and voluntary review.

 

Luca has always lived on the island. Mostly things are happy and protected there, but their blessed life is overshadowed by the curse. Part urban legend, part joke, the curse is all too real for Luca who lost her best friend to it and feels it creeping up on her once again.

 

Mystery, a creeping sense of threat, teen romance and a dusting of social issues all combine to make an interesting and very readable plot. Luca is a great character, she is just enough of an outsider to add a critical eye to the privilege most of the other Parris residents take for granted, but she’s also quite naïve and trusting about the ways of a world she’s known all of her life. 

 

I really enjoyed this YA novel and raced through it in a couple of days. It reminded me of Ginny Myers Sain’s Dark and Shallow Lies with a similar sense of teens living in an alternate version of an isolated town to the one the adult know about.