On Crow Island, people whisper, real magic lurks just below the surface. New to the idyllic summer getaway, Annie Mason is confident those are only rumors. Magic—the kind that leaves soldiers shell shocked and families heartbroken—has been prohibited since the war ended. Now, the closest anyone gets are party tricks designed for the rich and aimless.
Neither real magic nor faux magic interests Annie. Not after it stole her future. She’s only on the island to settle her late father’s estate and, hopefully, reconnect with her long-absent best friend, Beatrice, who fled their dreary lives for a more glamorous one.
Yet Crow Island is brimming with temptation, and the biggest one may be her enigmatic new neighbor.
Mysterious and alluring, Emmeline Delacroix is a figure shadowed by rumors of witchcraft. And when Annie witnesses a confrontation between Bea and Emmeline at one of Crow Island’s extravagant parties, she is drawn into a glittering, haunted world. A world where the boundaries of wickedness are tested, and the cost of illicit magic might be death.
There is so much to love about this book. The character dynamics, the found-family structure in Cross House that we see formed in the flashbacks, the sapphic longing and tension between the two main protagonists, Emmeline and Annie. It’s all dying to be read. At the core, this is a book about Annie and Emmeline—both as individuals and together. They both have to deal with a past that haunts them—one Annie didn’t have much say in and one Emmeline was forced to have a say in. And together, they have to figure out what this connection, this thread, that connects them means.
I’ve personally never read The Great Gatsby, but I’ve seen this tagged as “Witchy, sapphic Gatsby.” It delivers on the lavishness for sure. Unfortunately, there are a couple of things that stopped me from truly loving this book. I felt the pacing was off. This might sound odd, but it felt like I was reading two short novels in one volume. It went from an almost character study of tension, longing, and the desire to rekindle an old friendship. And then all of a sudden, it’s a domestic thriller. Now it’s a horror? The direction seemed to keep changing. I don’t know if this was intentional or inspired by something, but to me it made the book seem longer than it was because I kept getting…I don’t know…genre whiplash? As far as I’m aware,this is a standalone novel. It felt like there were a few plot lines that were introduced and wrapped up with an, “Oh by the way here’s the conclusion to that thing real quick.” It felt odd.
All that said, in the end this was such an interesting read. It has an almost uncomforting comfort to it, as oxymoronic as that sounds. I was in it for the characters. For Annie and for Emmeline. The side characters were great, too, but the main protagonists were why I was invested. Their strangers > instant connection > is one of us going to acknowledge this thing between us energy they have going on. Annie discovering a side she never knew she had in her—one that takes risks and goes to parties and knows what she wants. The type of person she had to leave her home to discover. And I loved reading about Emmeline coming to terms with who she is. A sister, a caretaker, a forlorn lover whose feelings can’t be reciprocated.
This truly is a book of wild and wicked things. (Okay but how can you NOT use the title to describe it? It’s literally perfect!) And maybe that’s what connects the seemingly random genre shifts; at their core, they’re all centered around whispers in the dark—the comforting ones and the chilling ones.
(I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley. The publication date is set for March 29, 2022.)
