Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jun 2022
352 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
Secrets. Lies. Super-bad choices. Witchcraft. This is Our Crooked Hearts, a darkly gripping contemporary fantasy from Melissa Albert, the New York Times bestselling author of The Hazel Wood.
The suburbs, right now...
Seventeen-year-old Ivy's summer break kicks off with an accident, a punishment, and a mystery: a stranger whose appearance in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, heralds a string of increasingly unsettling events. As the days pass, Ivy grapples with eerie offerings, corroded memories, and a secret she's always known―that there's more to her mother than meets the eye.
The city, back then...
Dana has always been perceptive. And the summer she turns sixteen, with the help of her best friend and an ambitious older girl, her gifts bloom into a heady fling with the supernatural. As the trio's aspirations darken, they find themselves speeding toward a violent breaking point.
Years after it began, Ivy and Dana's shared story will come down to a reckoning among a daughter, a mother, and the dark forces they never should've messed with.
"Tension and terror mount as the intelligently crafted, viscerally plotted story lines converge. Atmospherically tense prose and vividly sketched, true-to-life characters add depth, resulting in a tale both spellbinding and bingeworthy." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Albert's tale of mothers and daughters examines fraught choices and forgiveness against a cleverly insidious backdrop that will leave readers unable to see rabbits the same way again. While a romance is present, love in all its forms—platonic, parental, and romantic—is thoughtfully explored with gravitas and nuance...Riveting, creepy, and utterly bewitching; do not miss this one." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Teens who enjoy drama, secrets, romance, and mysteries with a twist of magic will love this one. A great addition to young adult collections in public libraries." - School Library Journal (starred review)
"A standalone novel so precise and enthralling that the only possible explanation is that Albert herself is a witch...a novel that will be devoured as well as savored. It takes risks and, magically, succeeds. And whether or not Albert is in fact a witch, one thing is for sure: her words are magic." - Booklist (starred review)
"Albert's creativity and imagination shine through in her world-building and lush language, leaving readers with a spellbinding, skin-tingling sensation." - Shelf Awareness
"Every line reads like an incantation, and the result is a book pulsing with magic, one that holds the reader firmly under its spell." - V.E. Schwab, author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
"Pulses with a bold, beguiling magic that feels brand new and classic at the same time. I couldn't put it down." - Karen McManus, author of One of Us Is Lying
"No one weaves fairy tale magic into the modern world like Melissa Albert. A truly masterful tale, Our Crooked Hearts comes with all the trappings of a classic: immaculate prose, a parallel generational story for the ages, and chills when you least expect them." - David Arnold, author of The Electric Kingdom
This information about Our Crooked Hearts was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Melissa Albert is the New York Times and indie bestselling author of the Hazel Wood series (The Hazel Wood, The Night Country, Tales from the Hinterland) and a former bookseller and YA lit blogger. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and included in the New York Times list of Notable Children's Books. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
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