What We Harvest by Ann Fraistat #bookreview #YA #horror

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Title: What We Harvest

Author: Ann Fraistat

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Publication Date: March 15, 2022

Page Count: 331

My rating: 3 1/2 stars

About the book:

For fans of Wilder Girls comes a nightmarish debut guaranteed to keep you up through the night, about an idyllic small town poisoned by its past, and one girl who must fight the strange disease that’s slowly claiming everyone she loves.

Wren owes everything she has to her hometown, Hollow’s End, a centuries-old, picture-perfect slice of America. Tourists travel miles to marvel at its miracle crops, including the shimmering, iridescent wheat of Wren’s family’s farm. At least, they did. Until five months ago.

That’s when the Quicksilver blight first surfaced, poisoning the farms of Hollow’s End one by one. It began by consuming the crops, thick silver sludge bleeding from the earth. Next were the animals. Infected livestock and wild creatures staggered off into the woods by day—only to return at night, their eyes fogged white, leering from the trees.

Then the blight came for the neighbors.

Wren is among the last locals standing, and the blight has finally come for her, too. Now the only one she can turn to is her ex, Derek, the last person she wants to call. They haven’t spoken in months, but Wren and Derek still have one thing in common: Hollow’s End means everything to them. Only, there’s much they don’t know about their hometown and its celebrated miracle crops. And they’re about to discover that miracles aren’t free.

Their ancestors have an awful lot to pay for, and Wren and Derek are the only ones left to settle old debts.

What We Harvest by Ann Fraistat is a young adult horror novel. The story in What We Harvest is one that is a zombie-esque tale with a “virus” called the Blight turning people into walking monsters in a fictional town called Hollow’s End.

Wren has been raised in Hollow’s End on her family’s farm where their miracle crops grow. Only Wren’s family knows the secret behind the crops, the magical stone at the middle of the farm. The stone however is full of a silver sludge that seems to have escaped and is now consuming the crops and townsfolk around Wren’s farm.

What We Harvest by Ann Fraistat was an eerily fantastic story that pulled me in right away. The situations turned tense immediately as the story slowly amped up the danger around the characters. The thing for me that had my rating at three and a half stars was I wasn’t overly enthused on how things went after thinking most of it was creepy and compelling, getting to the end was sort of a let down to me.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

Find this book online:

Goodreads  /   Amazon

About the author:

Ann Fraistat is an author, playwright, and narrative designer. She has co-authored plays including Romeo & Juliet: Choose Your Own Ending, as well as alternate reality games sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Born and raised in Maryland, Ann lives with her husband and ever-adorable cats, Ollie and Sophie. What We Harvest is her debut novel.

For more, find her at annfraistat.com or connect with her on Twitter or Instagram (@annfrai).