Review: And The Trees Crept In

AND THE TREES CREPT IN
Dawn Kurtagich
Paranormal Young Adult
352 pages
Little, Brown
Available September 6th
Source: BEA

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
When Silla and Nori arrive at their aunt's home, it's immediately clear that the "blood manor" is cursed. The creaking of the house and the stillness of the woods surrounding them would be enough of a sign, but there are secrets too--the questions that Silla can't ignore: Who is the beautiful boy that's appeared from the woods? Who is the man that her little sister sees, but no one else? And why does it seem that, ever since they arrived, the trees have been creeping closer?


Filled with just as many twists and turns as The Dead House, and with achingly beautiful, chilling language that delivers haunting scenes, AND THE TREES CREPT IN is the perfect follow-up novel for master horror writer Dawn Kurtagich.

MY THOUGHTS
And the Trees Crept In is organized chaos, a seeming jumble of formats from journal entries to narrative to flashbacks combining to purposely disorient us as we read so that we are every bit as on edge as Silla when her world starts to crumble. Though the way both the story and the book itself are structured may not be for everyone, the intriguing confusion and tension that stem from the unusual formatting shows a great deal of forethought on Ms. Kurtagich's part, and she leads us on a merry tale of terror until everything makes sense in the end.

Silla's story draws us in quickly, a brief flashback to a time when her mom and two sisters were young and invented a story about a Creeper Man preconditioning us to believe in the paranormal aspect of this tale, but as with The Dead House, Ms. Kurtagich excels at making us question whether we can trust anything our characters are showing us. Are we watching the actual physical deterioration of home, family and ultimately body thanks to supernatural happenings, or are we instead locked inside a fracturing mind believing what it needs to believe in order to cope?

Though we get easily swept up in the wrongness of the "blood manor" and the secrets of Aunt Cath's past, the middle section of this tale does drag just a bit – lots of wood creaking and trees creeping ever closer as Ms. Kurtagich prepares to step up her game in the final third. That being said however, the end is a blur of skimmed and flipped pages (not due to boredom, but rather our hurry to work our way through the final moves in the epic mind game Ms. Kurtagich is playing), until we reach the final chapters and get all the answers we've been craving.

Overall, And the Trees Crept In shows yet again what a unique storyteller Ms. Kurtagich is, preying on our curious minds as she ties her story into a gorgeous Gordion Knot and dares us to try and untie it.

Rating: 4/5

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This book was sent to me by the publisher  free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.