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thank you to NetGalley and BOOM! Studios for the oportunity to read and honestly review this!
3.5⭐
After losing her eye and the man she loves in a brutal mugging, Daisy McDonough attempts to move on, but her new prosthetic eye reveals an ancient evil trying to cross over into our own world...the Red Mother.
The concept and art were really good! I loved the eerie tone and the way the visuals captured that creeping sense of dread. The pacing dragged a little in parts, but overall, I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the gruesome design of the villain. It's unsettling in the best way.
Overall, a creepy and stylish read that leaves you unsettled long after the last page.
I can not thank Have a Cup of Johanny and NetGalley enough for this ARC!
As Johanny says, this story follows Marisol`s journey through grief, reclamation, and the radical magic of remembering.
Marisol returns to her hometown after her mother's death. She's forced to confront the magic and secrets her family buried long ago. Hallowthorn Hill — a place alive with whispers, memories, and darkness — calls to her, stirring visions of her ancestors and unearthing the parts of herself she's tried to hide.
The way that Latin history and ancestral roots blended was so beautifully done. The mystical and the frightening scenes just captivated me and i turned the pages so fast. The atmosphere in this book is unreal — lush, eerie, and full of longing. Every page felt alive with whispers and roots and echoes of something ancient. Johanny's prose is so lyrical it almost reads like a spell. You can feel the tension between light and dark, fear and power, memory and forgetting — and the way she ties it all to Marisol's growth is just stunning.
I was so deeply connected to Marisol in many ways: being scared to show my own culture, to actually know my own history. This book felt like a mirror — tender, haunting, and healing all at once. I loved how Marisol's journey wasn't just about confronting magic or fear, but about learning to belong to herself again. The way the story wove together identity, grief, and generational wounds left me genuinely breathless. By the end, I felt like I'd reclaimed a part of myself too.
This isn't just a story you read — it's one you feel. Like the whisper of wind through old trees, it lingers. The hill is patient, the hill is watching... and I can't wait for others to feel its call too.
It's a reminder that our roots, our grief, and our magic are all part of who we are. It's haunting in the best way, and I know Marisol's voice will stay with me for a long time.
Thank you again to Have a Cup of Johanny and NetGalley for the chance to experience this early — it's one I'll be thinking about for a long time.
3.75✨ but upon a reread, definitely a new favourite
I will not bother giving any synopsis (not even a short one) cause I read this without reading it and i will advice you to do the same
not sure my advice is any good tbh, but definitely made me enjoy the story more!
PROs:
• the prose
• the characters
• how we define the past and how it impacts the present
• memories, grief/ the feeling of loosing something and the desire to find it again
• magic realism done ✨amazingly✨
• the subtle mysteries that gets clearer but also more confusing by the end
• death and life
>>>> there are no CONs (not really) but i feel like you need the right mindset and mood to read this one and imo, upon a reread, this could be the best thing you'll ever read - there are a lot of misses (intentionaly, of course) and tiny bits of confusion (one way or another, you'll find the story clearer by the end)
also, this is not for everyone. i can, without any judging, understand why you`ll dnf it or give a low rating
••• i found myself crying at some points and then asked myself “why are u crying??? you actually didn't get that!”. Hillary is THAT good at giving you all the feels!
••• I don't think this review can show how masterpiecefully Hillary can craft a story (especially in this short amount of pages!) and also, I think it gets actually as confusing as the story itself, but BELIEVE ME, it s DARN GOOD!
••• some of my favourite quotes:
If memory is what we have left, when all is said and done, it may as well have happened at the very end.
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why even bother caring about someone if they could just vanish one day?
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She could not believe how close it felt, the past, when really it was all impossibly far. Perhaps the opposite was also true. One could locate things long gone, in the vast and willing scenery of the mind.
definitely will pick up everything she wrote and will ever write!
3.25☆
Firstly, this isnt a thriller. It felt more like a romantic-drama-suspense fiction.We are following two different timelines:2013. Molly Diamond, in her early 20s, is dreaming of becoming a writer. While she is trying to achieve that, she meets this Danner Land bands lead singer, Jack Danner. Despite loving each other so badly, and seeing themselves as soulmates, different aspects of their lives tears them apart.2022. Molly is now married to an VP in marketing at Octagon (the sports and entertainment agency) named Hunter; both have a 5-year old kid, Stella.In these time-frames and with 3 different POVs (Molly, Jack and Sabrina), we are seeing Mollys life, the first love who ended in a heartbreak, but also how she fights with the IVF and builds a friendship with a gal named Sabrina (who seems to know a lot about her and filled with rage and the desire of revenge towards her). Also, how her past is coming back to destroy (one way or other) what she has built all these years.
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Now, i really, really enjoyed the writing style and the characters development. Like, one second i was sympathizing with them, the next i wanted to throw my kindle away because of them.
Even though nothing actually happens, i was still hooked and curious about how it will end. All the characters were pretty unlikeable, but it is essentially human nature.
If I had known this was slow-paced and focused more on character study and their drama, i definitely would have enjoyed it more, but I was expecting tension, twists, more revengeful aspects, but also some more mature people (considering that all are in their 30s).
Overall, pretty forgetable story yet thoughtful, “fun” one to read.
