I joined NetGalley in late July, and made the (likely usually) mistake of requesting way too many books right out of the gate. Now I’m sitting here with 23 books to review, so I promptly had to join the #Reviewathon. Whoops!

I finished both of these books a couple of weeks ago… I had big plans of blogging my galley reviews at least weekly, but that hasn’t worked out so far. I will do better!

Seneca Lake by Emily Heebner

This was a short read with a really good concept. I enjoy historical fiction set during WWII, and I liked the characters assembled here. It was interesting to have a Native American character and the author did a good job of showing some of the difficulties he would have living and working with non-native people during a time of war.

There is a lot of beautiful imagery in this book and I enjoyed reading it. However, the book starts and ends very abruptly, is very heavy on dialogue, and the characters don’t feel as fleshed out as they could have been. Overall, a pleasant way to spend my afternoon.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Laws of the Skies by Grègoire Courtois

This little book is brutal and horrible and savage. It’s like Lord of the Flies plus Friday the 13th (with literal 6-year-olds instead of teenagers). I’m not giving away anything that isn’t in the description: of the 12 children and 3 adults on this camping trip, none of them survive.

I can’t recommend this book to anyone I know, but it’s well-written, beyond disturbing, and I could not stop reading it. Do with that what you will, but know that this book is one giant trigger warning.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️