The Revelry by Katherine Webber

I am a girl of Ember Grove and these are my woods…

Growing up in Ember Grove, Bitsy Clark knows better than to mess with the long-held traditions of her hometown. Until her best friend, Amy, persuades her to sneak into the Revelry - the end of school party in the woods, to which only those leaving are invited. When she wakes the next day, Bitsy can’t remember anything from the night before.

Weirder still, whenever she tries to speak about the Revelry, Bitsy chokes on the words. But this is just the beginning, and what starts out as a run of bad luck starts to feel like a curse. As Bitsy’s life goes from bad to worse, things only get better and better for her best friend.

It’s as if there’s only so much luck to go round and Amy’s getting all of it…

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Welcome to (hopefully) the last mixed review of the year!

Katherine Webber can definitely write. The turns of phrase and descriptions in this novel are fantastic. I was never bored and I always wanted to know what was going to happen next. They story itself was interesting and not like anything else I've read.

However, I felt a bit like Katherine was trying to marry two different genres and it didn't work very well for me. Spoilers: I'm still not sure now what really happened. Were the woods magic? Did Bitsy talk herself into believing they were? A mix of both? I really couldn't tell and I'm not sure Katherine knew, either. Weird for weirdness sake doesn't work too well for me.

Overall I enjoyed it, though, and I do recommend it to other readers who enjoy urban fantasy. I think it's going to do well.

Amy became obsessed.

Ever since, she's tried to find out what day it falls, exactly where it happens - what happens. All we know is that it's near the end of summer, before the new school year begins.

And that it's in the woods.

Once, when we were around nine, and still having sleepovers in the tent in the apple orchard, we saw people stumbling out of the woods at dawn. Two girls were laughing, high-pitched almost hysterical giggles, but one boy, I could have sworn he was bleeding. And the strangest thing was they were all wearing wings. Costume wings, the kind you slip over your shoulders and the fake feathers moult in minutes, but as they came out of the woods, for a moment I thought those wings were real. And we knew, we knew they have come from the Revelry. We warched them in silence, waiting for a hint, a clue to what had happened.

But they didn't notice us at all.

The Revelry publishes on the 6th of January, 2022. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.