TandeWrites

Today, in honour of me committing to reviewing all of my favourite reads of the year so far, we’re going to be reviewing My Throat an Open Grave by Tori Bovalino, another seasonally appropriate spooky read I read recently and fell in love with. I will say that the reviews for this book are very polarising, and mine is very positive.

Let’s begin!

In the small town of Winston, Pennsylvania, they fear the Lord of the Wood almost as much as they fear God. According to the legend, ghosts of the forest steal unwanted babies, leaving wood and bone in their place. Leah thinks the legend is just a way to scare the local kids until her baby brother disappears and the weight of the town’s judgment forces her to cross into the Lord of the Wood’s domain to bring him back. But the Lord isn’t what she expects. He tells her she can have her brother back for a price. Their bargain uncovers secrets Winston has tried to keep buried for decades, and what Leah unearths has her questioning everything she has been taught to fear.

This little book has had a notably big impact on my life. It’s so much more than just a spooky read: it’s full of redemption and learning to accept yourself and discovering that maybe you don’t have to constantly adapt to your current life. I’m always very interested in folklore-influenced books featuring religious towns and archaic views of women, mostly because it’s not something I’ve grown up around, and it usually results in me supporting women’s wrongs and female rage. This book did a wonderful job at showcasing how the women in this town are the ones who face the consequences of men’s actions, and the emotional change it takes to resist what you’ve been taught and enact your own beliefs. How the author weaves in these journeys of self-discovery through dark moments and lighting the way with hope is what I love most about the book.

Leah is an engaging, multi-faceted character who showed great growth over the course of the book, and I’m glad I got to learn so much about her in such little time. In her town, she’s a misfit because she doesn’t obey the rules that this conservative, god-fearing society has carved out for her, and she’s friends with other misfits as they accept that their town is trying to force them out. Leah’s friendship with Jess and how their (platonic) love for each other tied into the ending was a welcome addition to the storyline.

This book was more romantic than I was expecting. The Lord of the Woods is quickly revealed to be an attractive young man, and it’s evident that he’ll become a romantic interest, no matter how many longing glances it takes. I was disappointed at first, just because romance is not something I usually strive for in horror-influenced or female-centric novels, but it wasn’t a defining part of Leah’s storyline for the bulk of the book, and she still had sufficient and interesting development that didn’t involve him. There is nothing I resonate more with than a character who realises that the devils from their childhood are the hero after all. I do almost wish that the book included the Lord’s POV as I found him to be such an interesting character who was the perfect balance to Leah, and I wanted to know More about him.

Recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that I only hand out five-star ratings for books if they make me feel something, and there was a lot of emotion in this little thing. The ending left me on the verge of tears on the train. I saw the twist coming, and it’s so simple, yet it’s thick with emotion and beautifully written, and it’s what pushed this book from four stars to five (4.5 stars on StoryGraph) for me. Those last fifty to one hundred pages were very twisty but skillfully weaved together all the droplets of information I was fed throughout, and it was an incredibly satisfying conclusion, even if I did feel destroyed emotionally.

In summary, this is a wonderfully atmospheric and moody read, perfect for the spooky season and new readers of this horror-romance (horroromance?) genre.