***Disclaimer: I received a free, early advanced reader copy of The Curses from the publishers and NetGalley for review purposes.
This is going to be a different kind of review. The Curses by Laure Eve is the second novel in a series; it follows the events of The Graces, though it takes on a different point of view. This is not a review for The Graces, but as the The Curses is a sequel, and I don’t want to spoil any of the events of first novel if you haven’t read it, so I won’t be doing a synopsis like I usually do and I will try to be vague about textual details. I will admit that I was really excited to read this one. I finished The Graces in the summer and I was super impressed, so I wanted to read the sequel immediately. Imagine my disappointment when I saw that it wasn’t coming out until December 31st. However, imagine my excitement when I realized that I had been given permission to read the eARC. I was super happy.
I gave The Curses four out of five stars on GoodReads. It was a thoroughly enjoyable book. It took me a bit to get used to the change from River’s point of view to Summer’s, but I actually really enjoyed the different perspective. This story was much more about the Graces than it was about River, so having that different point of view really added to it. Plus Summer is a very interesting character to read about. She’s very strong willed and also deeply emotional. It was really easy to empathise with her character.
The story is very compelling. You want to know what’s going on and you want everything to be okay for them. Something is clearly wrong with the community and you need to know what it is. There’s just enough doubt and suspense that made me question what the cause of the wrongness was, and the magical mysteries were extremely compelling. I was kept guessing throughout the story, trying to figure out what was going to happen next and was rewarded with an engaging plot and just enough twists. I was pretty happy with the ending as well as I felt like it wrapped up a lot of the loose threads and answered a lot of the questions that I had.
I wasn’t completely blown away by the story but it was quite compelling and I really enjoyed it. I was compelled enough to finish the book today because I wanted to know what was going to happen and for me that it always a good thing. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a bit of magic in their stories and I also recommend it to people who enjoy magical realism. So when December 31st rolls around, go check it out. If you’ve read The Graces first of course. ;P
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