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Corpse Creek by Vincent Ralph. Rating: 3.5 stars.

Read from August 8th to 9th.

Before I get into the review, a quick thank you to both the publishers over at Wednesday Books for allowing me access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Corpse Creek is the third novella in the Bleak Haven series. Each one takes place in a town where mysterious and sometimes supernatural things happen. We follow Ethan whose brother drowned in a curse creek four years ago. Now Ethan's back at the creek looking for closure. But something that looks a lot like his brother comes out of the creek demanding a sacrifice to take his place. But is Ethan really willing to do the unthinkable to bring his brother home? Corpse Creek comes out on September 15th and is available for preorder now.

This one surprised me in a few ways. I expected more thriller-y aspects than what we got and we got way more discussions on grief and what it means to live with grief. It makes so much sense to have Ethan explore his grief and the grief of others in this town where so much bad shit happens. It also gave the reader a moment to explore the questions of why someone would stay in this small town where all the horrible things keep happening and how these people can just keep living life with so much darkness in it. I appreciated that by the end of the novel Ethan's dad is starting to pull himself together. It was nice to see him acknowledge that he was putting too much on his son by not being a present parent.

I really didn't like Ethan's friends. All of them were horrible the whole time which made me feel like we could have had an out there for the whole someone taking Brody's place thing. But Ethan didn't kill his friends which is a damn shame. Between one of them stealing his brother's song to play at a concert, one of them using him for their college essay, and the other writing fan fiction of his brother's death...I kind of feel like a little death was warranted. Also, I'm sorry, but you had two roads for that ending and somehow we took both and messed it up. It looked like we were going one direction (which would have raised my rating to be honest) but then the author pulled their punch and went down the second road instead. I know it's supposed to make sense for who these characters are and whatnot, but it just came across as the author being unwilling to go there. In a lot of the morally grey stuff I read, I find that what I enjoy most is when the author is willing to go there. Take the story to the dark place. Allow the characters to explore what going there will mean for them morally but also for their feelings about themselves and for their future. Fiction isn't meant to be only a shining moral example of what we should do or how we should be. We have to be willing to allow ourselves this fictional space to explore things we would never or could never explore in the real world. Do I want a real person to do what almost happened here? Absolutely not, I would find that really upsetting in real life. But I do think it makes a better story.

Adversary to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer. Rating: 3.5 stars.

Read from August 5th to 7th.

This is going to be a difficult book to review. I said in my review of the previous book that a lot of the charm and fun of this world has waned. I think it was bound to happen given we're so far into the series. But...after the way the last 25 pages went...I kind of, almost, think it was on purpose. There's a small part of my brain (the kind that apparently listens to conspiracy theories) that thinks the reason we're being shown over and over and over again all of the banter, all of the silliness, all of the cosiness is to do what happened in the last 25 pages. I was going to rate the book 3 stars (which would have been a shocker for me), but then the last 25 pages hit and it yanked the book up to 3.5 stars. If done intentionally, brilliant. If done unintentionally, this works so fucking well. It really changes the direction of the next book and I'm here for it.

I agree with my previous review that said that as the plot thickens a lot of this silliness and charm feels misplaced because the situation is so serious. Like, girl, why are you fawning over the guy you had sex with an hour ago while you're in the middle of meeting to discuss HOW TO SAVE THE KINGDOM?? ...but if this was done on purpose? To lead to the end of this novel/the cliffhanger/me waiting for the final book to come out for a year? So well done. Which is why this review is hard! There is some character development for side characters that I didn't expect but did really enjoy. I want to see specifically where Kingsley goes from here. Marv? Well, okay, sure. Why not? Also, there's a subplot with Lyssa hiding in this one that I want to see really come to the light in the next one.