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OLDER FICTION
Albert, Melissa

Our Crooked Hearts

352 pp. | Flatiron | June, 2022 | Trade ISBN 978-1-25082-636-7 $18.99 | Library ISBN 978-1-4328-9994-3 $24.99 | Ebook ISBN 978-1-250-82637-4 $10.99
(2) YA This eerie fantasy's perspective alternates between that of Ivy, a present-day teen, and Dana, Ivy's mother, during her own early teen years. Unexplained things are happening in Ivy's story line--a naked girl shows up in the woods at night; dead rabbits keep appearing. The novel gradually introduces this strangeness, as well as Ivy and her mother's strained relationship, and, in Dana's chapters, a character named Marion who's obsessed with the occult. Ivy's investigation of her mom's past slowly pieces together their fraught history as mother and daughter. As Dana's chapters progress through time to the present, they build to a key, unremembered incident from Ivy's own past, which sheds light on everything that readers have seen so far. Slow revelations build tension and keep pages turning, while the dual point of view allows readers to empathize with both protagonists' motivations, even as each one finds it hard to understand the other. A carefully constructed novel that will invite re-readings.
Reviewer: Shoshana Flax | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2022

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