This was fine. Not terrible, not great. A quick read with some creepy scenes. Overall, just... fine.

I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.

This is around a 3.5 star book for me.

The story is so descriptive, but in a good way. The icy wind was blowing around in my head, the snow was falling thick and fast in front of my eyes and I felt the trudging of the snow - every last step. The scenery in this novel is so vivid that I could see everything that was described.

I thoroughly enjoyed the narrative of the main character of the book and was as sassy and sarcastic as my 17 year old sister. This personality shone through the terrible goings-on in the book and added a small portion of humour that lifted the book further.

I feel that this book could have been tied together a little better. There is some fantastic mythology included in the book (brand new mythology to me), but this isn't really brought together in the story. It just seems to be something added on to the story to give it a paranormal edge rather than really incorporated to spook and thrill. In the end, this mythology just did not lead to anything.

I did not see that ending happening, but it doesn't really explain things. I would rather the book just ended when the main part ended.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. The end of the chapters leave you with chills and the ending is not expected, especially after the 'final' chapter. A well-written and surprisingly short horror story, perfect for the colder months.

Sharon Gosling’s Fir was an interesting addition to the already extensive collection of YA horror, but like many books in the genre didn’t quite live up to expectations.

Fir tells the story of the Stromberg family, who leave their comfortable inner city Stockholm life to move to a remote tree farm where the Stromberg patriarch hopes to rebuild the lumber business. But there is something out in the old growth forest that begins terrorising the family, while they try and survive the harshness of Sweden’s remote winters.

There were some fascinating elements in Fir. The forest had character, and the descriptions of the woods, the cold, the dark and the isolation were incredibly well rendered. There were some promising moments with the introduction of old world mythology which had the potential to make this a much deeper story and Gosling took the opportunity to make some important and tactful observations about environmental ethics without coming across as forceful or on the nose.

Unfortunately, despite these elements, Fir utterly failed to be believable. Within the first few pages, it had already fallen into the YA trap of choosing just to have unreasonably rubbish parents to mask the fact that it’s difficult to write a believable relationship between a teenager and a parent once you’re past the age where you no longer rely on them. I say difficult, which is why so many YA authors just either omit the adults of the story entirely (I’m looking at you Leo Hunt) or make them such caricatures of bad parenting that the focus naturally sways toward its teenage protagonists. Their reactions to situations and lack of communication with their daughter were simply not believable, and so made the plot feel entirely contrived.

One of the most effective elements was that the plot developed to allow for some ambiguity as to the truth of the ‘supernatural’ occurrences in the book. I liked this, as it left it entirely open to interpretation, and made the premise of isolation even more frightening. Letting the characters’ experiences speak for themselves made the local mythology even more interesting, as it highlighted how remote isolation could give rise to fears like these. Had the book ended before the appendix I might have rated it far higher, but instead, Gosling chose to spoon feed the readers a supernatural ending that detracted from the whole narrative. A book is only as good as its ending, so had it ended a few pages earlier, it would have been a much better book.

Overall, Fir was a quick and easy read. It wasn’t particularly cerebral, certainly didn’t bring much to the YA horror genre, but was most definitely full of unrealised potential. The plot had the potential to be unique with a critical message about environmental responsibility, but instead just read as a generic supernatural YA story about bad parenting.

A brilliantly written novel grabs your attention from the first paragraph and holds it until the last highly recommended you read this novel