Seventeen-year-old Ivy has just started her summer, and already she’s been in an accident and encountered a bizarre stranger in the middle of the night who seems to recognize her. When she tells her mother, Dana, about her bizarre encounter with a young stranger, her mother responds by disappearing after claiming she needs to take care of something. After years of confusion and a struggle for answers about herself, Ivy begins to dig through her mother’s past and discovers that Dana has a great deal of secrets including magic, dark forces, and a spirit that won’t stay gone.
Author Melissa Albert has to be educated in magic practice and witchcraft because her writing seems to be mostly factually correct and full of real protective practices. While the beginning of the book is a bit convoluted, it is because there is simply so much to explore in the story of Ivy and Dana. The book bounces back and forth between the present and past, but Our Crooked Hearts doesn’t suffer from this back and forth as many books written in this style can. The story flows beautifully, even if its between decades.
Our Crooked Hearts is genuinely suspenseful and fascinating. I definitely recommend picking it up for your summer time reading.
Our Crooked Hearts is available June 28, 2022 from Flatiron Books.
