This book surpassed my expectations, which is always a great thing. It takes place in a small town in Texas on the edge of the Big Thicket. Four childhood friends - the Sisterhood of Cemetery Road - spend their days riding bikes around the small town until one night when Libby goes missing. She was never found and not long after Kit moves away. Years later, Kit returns in order to fix up and sell her parent's old house. Kit has never planned on returning to her part of the Thicket, but the Thicket has other plans. Reconnecting with the remaining two members of the Sisterhood and brothers Colton and Jackson lead Kit on a journey that traverses the supernatural as well as the darkest parts of humanity.
I absolutely loved this book. I found the summary to be a bit misleading in that I thought this would be more of a girl coming back to her small town and reconnecting with the people she left behind and maybe finding closure about her lost friend. I was expecting a much more quiet book with themes about grief, friendship, and forgiveness. I certainly was not expecting the scary supernatural elements that permeated the story. The cover and the summary, in my opinion, do not do this story justice for just how entertaining and enthralling of a story it is. There are consistent threats from the supernatural elements that Kit encounters and while none of them physically hurt her, they are terrifying. The story does still cover themes of grief, friendship, and forgiveness, but with an undercurrent of the unknown forces that creep out of the Thicket at night. There were a few scenes that had my heart racing and I had to put down the book twice when I was reading before bed because it was just a bit too much and my overactive imagination was getting away from me. This book wasn't what I expected it to be - in the best way possible.
The relationship between Kit and the elderly Miss Maddie was my favorite relationship in the whole book. Miss Maddie is Kit's neighbor who lives in a run down estate. Miss Maddie is the definition of a crotchety old lady who wants nothing to do with Kit. She sits on her front porch and threatens Kit for just walking by her house. When Kit returns to town, she realizes that Miss Maddie doesn't have anyone looking out for her so Kit takes it upon herself to try. Bringing Miss Maddie dinner and generally checking in on her, despite the verbal assault Miss Maddie slings, is Kit's new mission while she's fixing up her parent's house. There were rumors back when they were kids that there was something off about Miss Maddie - or Mad Maddie McPhearson as she was called - and Kit slowly unravels the mystery of Miss Maddie. Their relationship really highlights what kind of person Kit is and it helps Kit remember the good times of living in the town before tragedy struck. While the two never completely get along, there is a small camaraderie that builds between the two women throughout the book.
There were two small things that irked me about the story. The first is the hints along the way that nothing is exactly as it seems. Now, normally with these kinds of spooky mystery books, I'm already questioning everyone's motives and actions and I think that is a standard expectation of the genre. However, Ellis takes it one step further and will put lines like "if I had only known then" at the end of some scenes. Which was just too heavy-handed for my liking and it broke my immersion in the reading because it made me go "okay, well I guess this will be important later, good to know" and by the third instance of this, I let go of my own guesses or suspicions on certain characters because the author didn't say anything about them so they must not be part of the mystery. It just took some of the mystery away and took me out of the reading experience since those were really the only times the narrator had that sort of 20/20 hindsight.
The other small thing that I wasn't a fan of was how quickly the romance element moved at the end of the book. I was a huge fan of the romance elements of the story overall, and felt that Kit and the love interest had a nice slow burn relationship building which was appropriate given all the spooky stuff happening and the fact that Kit wasn't sure if she was even staying in town or not for most of the book. The love interest was also a very solid character who was Kit's rock for much of the story. She leaned on him and he was always there to help her. The romance wasn't the main story line by far so when the ending epilogue specifically focused on the romance, it didn't feel like the right tone to end the book on.
Finally, the last part I want to mention that I really liked was how this book used To Kill A Mockingbird as a touchstone for some of the themes of the book. The four girls read it in school and set out one summer to figure out who is their town's Boo Radley. The characters call back to this a few times throughout the story and I think it was interesting to see the parallels between the stories. The general mood and tone of the stories are somewhat similar with their small town southern charm and slower pace of life. The theme of 'outsiders' is strong in this book and we see that theme explored from multiple perspectives which I found really interesting. I find a lot of time classic novels are referenced in modern books but I haven't read many classics so I don't usually care about the references to them that much. But To Kill A Mockingbird had a big impact on me when we read it in 9th grade English class so it really deepened my reading experience of The Girls of Cemetery Road.
A fantastic book about grief, friendship, forgiveness, and outsiders. Some very scary scenes that got my heart racing. An exploration on the supernatural as well as the evils that lurk closer to home. Highly recommend!
344 pages.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing the ARC. This book was published on August 25, 2020.
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