The Furies by Katie Lowe #bookreview #YA #paranormal #thriller

Title: The Furies

Author: Katie Lowe

Publisher:  St. Martin’s Press

Publication Date: October 8, 2019

Page Count:  357

My rating: 2 stars

About the book:

This page-turning, harrowing debut is the story of a girl trying to fit in, whose obsessive new friends and desperation to belong leads her to places she’d never imagined…dark, dangerous, and possibly even violent.

~~~

In 1998, a sixteen-year-old girl is found dead.

She’s posed on a swing on her boarding school’s property, dressed all in white, with no known cause of death. Whispers and rumors swirl, with no answers. But there are a few who know what happened; there is one girl who will never forget.

One year earlier: a new student, Violet, steps on the campus of Elm Hollow Academy, an all-girl’s boarding school on the outskirts of a sleepy coastal town. This is her fresh start, her chance to begin again in the wake of tragedy, leave her demons behind. Bright but a little strange, uncertain and desperate to fit in, she soon finds herself invited to an advanced study group, led by her alluring and mysterious art teacher, Annabel.

There, with three other girls—Alex, Grace, and Robin—the five of them delve into the school’s long-buried grim history: of Greek and Celtic legends; of the school founder’s “academic” interest in the occult; of gruesome 17th century witch trials. Annabel does her best to convince the girls that her classes aren’t related to ancient rites and rituals, and that they are just history and mythology. But the more she tries to warn the girls off the topic, the more they are drawn to it, and the possibility that they can harness magic for themselves.

Violet quickly finds herself wrapped up in this heady new world of lawless power—except she is needled by the disappearance of a former member of the group, one with whom Violet shares an uncanny resemblance. As her friends’ actions take a turn for the darker and spiral out of control, she begins to wonder who she can trust, all the while becoming more deeply entangled. How far will these young girls go to protect one another…or to destroy one another?

The Furies by Katie Lowe is another young adult paranormal thriller that was compared to The Craft so of course I picked it up. A private school setting with witches should be right up my alley, key word in that should.

The book opens with the body of a sixteen year old being found dressed all in white and posed on a swing at the Elm Hollow Academy, an all girls boarding school. Then the story jumps back to the year before where we meet Violet who tells the story of what led up to the body being found at the prestigious private school.

So again, we have a young adult book that should have worked for me but instead I found myself dragging my way through. I found it hard to connect to the girls in the story and thought the scenes in the school learning magic, mythology and the witch trials etc all so slow and perhaps that was what made it feel so tedious that I just couldn’t get invested when other things were happening. The Furies became another book to me that I just wanted more and wasn’t finding it along the way.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Find this book online: 

Goodreads  /   Amazon**

About the author:

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