Cryer's Cross

You know? As a slice-of-life romance about a girl learning to grieve and move on from her lost boyfriend, it's a pretty great story. It covers the basis of Kendall handling loss, while exploring the realistic challenges of learning to fall in love again while still clinging to the past. And new boy Jacián is a dynamic character trying not to trip over himself as he too deals with his own issues of fitting in, and being uprooted from a comfortable life into a whole new world of farming and living in the middle of nowhere.

And I enjoyed the romance. I was a little disappointed when the first couple broke up, because I was excited to see a YA book with the main couple already together, but it wasn't a total issue. The romance between Kendall and Jacián was handled very well, and I loved seeing them go from a rocky start to finding out new things about each other and eventually falling in love. Good times.

On top of all that, though, the novel does a great job of showcasing a main character with OCD, showing off a milder case of the mental disorder. It's handled realistically, and aside from it being mentioned one too many times ("My OCD was going crazy" don't read as well as just, showing her thoughts and anxiety), and is a big part of Kendall's life. It's nice to see that the OCD is treated as a part of Kendall, and while the book showcases struggles with it, it's more involving struggles about how other people treat her than the OCD itself being something she needs to get rid of. In fact, by the end of the novel it's her OCD that saves her life. She even says as much that if she hadn't had her OCD, she would never have noticed something was wrong with the desk, or really thought about what was going on when she was trying to bury herself alive. It was great seeing a character accept something like OCD about herself and embrace it, instead of trying to be cured.

However, despite all of those good things - the book advertises itself as a horror novel, and in that aspect it falls flat. It's just...not there. The book tries to build up the horror and suspense with little messages between each chapter, but they're all sort of generic and repetitive. They're quickly forgotten as the novel dives back into daily life and dealing with feelings, so the tension and atmosphere they're meant to create doesn't really happen. There are a few moments in the text where there's set up for the bigger paranormal mystery going on in the background, but up until the last 20% of the book most of the "hints" could be easily brushed off as normal things - or just the side effects of grief. There were a few moments aside from Kendall noticing the desk moving around, such as Hector and Mr. Greenwood acting odd about the events, but they're all very quick moments. Hints they are, but not really anything that builds tension or makes me wonder what's going on.

Eventually, all of the paranormal activity happens very close to the end of the book, and while it's "explained" it's still left with a lot of questions. I can't say I'm satisfied with what was essentially an info dump at the end of the book to give the back story. And even all that really came down to ghosts.

I will say though, that it was a good story at the end. The backstory explanation was the makings of a great horror story and I can see what it was going for. I feel like if that bit at the end was explored a bit more through out the earlier parts of the book, this could have had a lot of potential to be very unnerving and a great, tense ride. But, it didn't really happen that way and to each their own.

Overall though, I liked the book. Like I said earlier, I really enjoyed the tackling of grief and moving on. I liked the exploration of a small town and the farming community. I liked how Kendall's OCD was handled, and I liked Jacián. Lots of good things in here to enjoy, but if you're just looking for a hardcore mystery or scary novel, you might want to look elsewhere. On the other hand, if you're looking for a book with just a tiny bit of mystery and horror - it might be just great.