Our Crooked Hearts
A Novel
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3.9 • 17 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * #1 INDIE NEXT PICK * 6 STARRED REVIEWS
Secrets. Lies. Bad choices. Dangerous magic. . . . From NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Melissa Albert comes OUR CROOKED HEARTS, a contemporary fantasy "so precise and enthralling that the only explanation is that Albert herself is a witch" (Booklist, starred review)
On the way home from a party, seventeen-year-old Ivy and her soon-to-be ex nearly run over a nude young woman standing in the middle of a tree-lined road. It’s only the first in a string of increasingly eerie events and offerings: a dead rabbit in the driveway, a bizarre concoction buried by her mother in the backyard, a box of childhood keepsakes hidden in her parents’ closet safe. Most unsettling of all, corroded recollections of Ivy and her enigmatic mother’s past resurface, with the help of the boy next door.
What if there’s more to Ivy’s mother than meets the eye? And what if the supernatural forces she messed with during her own teen years have come back to haunt them both? Ivy must grapple with these questions and more if she’s going to escape the darkness closing in.
Straddling Ivy’s contemporary suburban town and her mother’s magic-drenched 1990s Chicago, this bewitching and propulsive story rockets towards a conclusion guaranteed to keep readers up all night.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ivy Chase, 17, is on her way home from a party when the car in which she's riding nearly hits a naked young woman standing in the road. A bizarre encounter ensues, and unsettling events follow: a decapitated rabbit appears in Ivy's suburban driveway, and someone else's face flashes in her mirror. After Ivy discovers inexplicable inconsistencies in her childhood memories, she decides to confront her mother, Dana, and honorary aunt, Fee, both of whom seem capable of "unnatural things." Upon arriving at the women's herbal remedies shop, however, Ivy finds the business closed and a surface bloody. Albert (The Hazel Wood) skillfully interweaves Ivy's increasingly urgent search for answers with chapters from Dana's perspective, recounting her and Fee's 16th summer. While at the teens' fathers' fish fry, the motherless, rudderless girls meet Marion Peretz, a lonely 17-year-old who's fond of punk rock and dark magic. Tension and terror mount as the intelligently crafted, viscerally plotted story lines converge. Atmospherically tense prose and vividly sketched, true-to-life characters add depth, resulting in a tale both spellbinding and bingeworthy. Most characters cue as white. Ages 14–up.
