No, just no, I don't even know what to write, how to review this, I do not know a single character's name even though I finished it 2 minutes ago, I have no idea what happened except there's some weird ass forest.

Thank you NetGalley for providing digital advanced copy in exchange for honest review.

I just reviewed The Luminaries by Susan Dennard as an advanced reader copy thanks to @DaphnePress and @NetGalley.

From the minute I opened this book I was lost in it!

Winne Wednesday wants nothing more than to join The Luminaries; the ancient order that protects her town, Hemlock Falls and the rest of the world from that nightmares that spawn in the forest just outside town.

The trials involved in joining this order will be especially difficult, as Winne and her family have been outcast thanks to the betrayal of her father, and she is without the specialist training of her peers.

She turns to an ex-best friend to help her as she uncovers horrors and secrets in the forest, competes in the trials and tries to re-instate her family in their society.

A fast-paced story that gripped me from the outset. I did not put this down once I’d started it.

Dennard pulls you into this perfectly constructed world, the characters are well developed and relatable. She paints the conflicted emotions of Winnie, her mother and brother particularly well. Desperate as they are to be called back into the fold, they are angered by the double betrayal of a father and spouse – then a society who shunned and punished them.

I felt I were tumbling from one adventure to another with Winnie, feeling (almost) as breathless as she is. Facing injustice and ridicule as she attempts to highlight a danger that is coming.

I cannot wait for more (there’d better be a next instalment).

#TheLuminaries #SusanDennard #NetGalley #DaphnePress

I’d like to thank NetGalley and Bolinda Audio for approving me for an ARC of this book. A special thank you should also go to Bex for being my buddy reader on this one too.

Told entirely from Winnie Wednesday’s POV we are introduced to the world of Hemlock Falls and all the creatures it inhabits. Winnie and her family have been outcasted by their group and Winnie are determined to see their status restored. With the hunter trials looming, this is her opportunity to gain back the respect her family have lost.

This interesting read had me turning the pages from the start. If you took all the best bits of The Hunger Games, Twilight and Divergent then The Luminaries is what you get. There are creatures, families, monsters, action, a hint of romance, and mystery. Plenty of storylines to keep any reader interested without drowning us in information.

I felt the fear when Winnie was taking part in the trials and found myself squinting for fear of seeing these creatures come to life, it’s a wonder I didn’t have nightmares! Aside from the trials you also have our complicated protagonist who has found herself caught up in a lie or two. When you add in all the usual teenage dramas you can’t help but feel that Winnie is swamped with everything and her family doesn’t really help matters.

The community of Hemlock Falls and the different ‘houses’ were fascinating. I liked that each family had its own responsibilities and played an integral part in keeping the community going. I do have my suspicions about a few of the higher-ranked members and wonder why they are so fixated on one creature instead of another. No spoilers from me though!

I am desperate to see what happens next in the series. I wouldn’t say it was a cliff-hanger ending, as such, but there were a few loose threads that tell me the next book is going to be amazing!

Going in, I didn’t know much about how the The Luminaries came to be, but the blurb sounded appealing and I've enjoyed Susan Dennard's other series.

One of my favourite aspects of this book was the pages of the illustrated compendium; I really enjoyed seeing the drawn version of some of the nightmares.

There were several interesting plot threads set up, including the mystery of the werewolf, the new nightmare, and Winnie’s family’s ostracization because of her father’s betrayal, which I found to be an intriguing source of conflict and motivation. However, none of these wrapped up, and I was hoping at least one would have been. Even though this a series, it seemed as if there were too many open endings and more questions introduced.

As an organisation, the Luminaries were fascinating, as were the Dianas, but the development around them felt sparse; although I did enjoy what we got to learn.

Although The Luminaries overall was enjoyable, it felt like a long setup for the next book, and I was waiting to really be immersed in the world, the characters and the story. However, it does provide a good foundation for the rest of the series.

Despite not quite connecting with the first book, I’ll be continuing with the series, and I’m curious as to whether any of my theories are correct and where the story will go.

Thanks to Netgalley and Daphne Press for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

An entertaining, captivating and perfect fantasy read. It has all my favorite tropes and everything that I want (and need) to see in a fantasy book!

An interesting concept, I enjoyed this book, I didn’t love it,
I may be considerably outside the YA bracket these days, but when it’s well written I think YA is for everybody, this book didn’t really excite me or grip me unfortunately which is a shame because the premise is interesting, the town and its inhabitants have huge potential and the tasks sounded interesting.

I’m not sure I’ll be reading any more of the series, but the basis for a great story is in this book somewhere.

A fun, fast paced, supernatural interesting book. Found it difficult to put down3! There was monsters and romance and short chapters. I would definitely recommend

Oh, The Luminaries was a wild ride! Lurking beneath that gorgeous cover is a whole host of deliciously deadly supernatural goodness. Think Chilling Adventures of Sabrina with a hint of Hunger Games - protagonist Winnie Wednesday faces danger on every page.

Susan Dennard has crafted a dark yet alluring world, full of intrigue. Action packed and thrillingly exciting, there's never a dull moment in Hemlock Falls. With it's nightmarish creatures, ancient order of monster hunters and complicated family dynamics, there's a lot to learn and a lot to unpick amongst all that monster slaying!

With a vast cast of characters, it was interesting to see which role each played within The Luminaries, I enjoyed learning about the different clans. As usual, the highest order members were utterly frustrating. But Winnie quickly has you on side, outcast yet badass, you can't help but root for her!

The reletionship between Winnie and Jay brings a little light to the book's overall darkness, like most YA couples, they're cute but I must admit I'm far more intrigued by the whole "thing" with Winnie's Father... I have a feeling that Dennard has a LOT more in store for The Luminaries and I, for one, am here for it!! 🌙✨

LOVED LOVED LOVED this! Learning about all the different groups, the nightmares, I loved everything about this book. Possibly one of my favourite of the year and Susan Dannards writing as always is amazing and effortless. I can't wait to see this world expand further and to explore all the plot points not resolved in the first book!

Winnie Wednesday is living the life of an outcast, ever since her father was proclaimed a traitor four years earlier. Now, she's sick and tired of being ignored and bullied by the others in her town, and watching her mother struggle - and decides to enter the Hunter Trials to claim back the respect her family deserve. But when Winnie enters the forest, where every night, Nightmare creatures appear to threaten humans and are killed by Winnie's townspeople called The Luminaries - she finds out that while hunting is in her blood, it's also a terrifying thing to do and maybe she's not as good as he thought.

This was a fun YA urban fantasy and once you can get past every character being named after a day of the week, I quite enjoyed the story that had a nice mystery/threat running through it as well as lots of action scenes and horrific moments with the Nightmares. I think this one falls into the YA category a lot more than Susan Dennard's The Witchland books (which I think straddle that line between YA and adult) but I still enjoyed it even though I was thinking of all the characters as something straight out of Riverdale, haha.

The pacing of the story was good, and I felt swept up in the story, especially the last half or so and I appreciated Winnie's growing friendship with Fatima and the twins, while her crush on Jay grew even bigger. I do think some things are really obvious in the story and was surprised they weren't revealed but I'm looking forward to book two to see where this all goes.

The best part of The Luminaries is the whimsey that goes along with this story. From alliterated names (“Winnie Wednesday”) to exciting costuming to fascinating descriptions of monsters, Winnie’s town seems like exactly where I do to want to live, but I’m incredibly glad I got to read about her life there. This was a very fun version of a YA competition story in a mystical world that examines culture, community, and belonging in an incredibly compelling way.

The Luminaries left me with such a book hangover! It was so great that for days after I finished, I kept going to pick it back up before remembering that I'd already got to the end. I am SO looking forward to book two.

Winnie Wednesday's life dream is to join the Luminaries and spend her nights destroying nightmarish monsters. But Winnie and her family have been shunned as traitors ever since her father betrayed Hemlock Falls, which means no training, no support, and no easy access to the hunter trials. If she's going to pass the trials and become a Luminary, she'll have to contend with more than monsters - an even bigger challenge than she expects given the new monster stalking the forest that only she has seen. Can she fulfil her dream, redeem her family and convince everyone that she's not making up the most deadly monster Hemlock Falls has ever seen, all while fighting for her life?

I've been a long-time subscriber to Dennard's newsletter for her brilliant writing advice, but this is actually the first novel of hers that I've read (a few of the others have been waiting very patiently in the tbr pile on my kindle...) I'm absolutely going to have to rectify that this year because I loved The Luminaries so much! It was packed full of brilliant world building, non-stop action, tension and really high stakes. It also had brilliant characters who were flawed and made mistakes, with plenty of secrets still left to uncover in the next book.

My Netgalley file was corrupted and kept skipping pages but I was so invested in what I had read that I went and bought the ebook so that I could keep reading.

Although I liked the overall ideas in this, with fantastical and dangerous competitions in a town steeped in ancient family feuds, I found the world building a bit lacking for me. It's all just a bit insubstantial, with a million different types of mythical beings thrown into one large forest and confusingly I'm still not sure why. The characters are all a bit generic too, with a heroine who 'isn't like other girls' and a whiny, broody love interest. And no top of all that nothing really happens plot wise beyond what you already know after reading the synopsis. There's no surprises, no suspense and therefore I had no real interest.

Lacking in substance, this really needed some attention to detail and character development to make it stand out more in the saturated YA fantasy market.

Part of me wishes to say this book was one of the best I've read, but I just can't. It's sad, because I did love the premise, the whole hunting nightmares, the lore - which, besides a few creatures, is mostly Celtic creatures - but it was just too. Effing. Slow.
Not only slow, it was repetitive at times, many times, especially when it came to Winnie's time as an outcast and how she felt over the same topic. Rather than a YA, The Luminaries felt more like an introspective read, one of growth, which makes sense, only if paired with a solid and actually moving-forward plot.
Winnie was delightful, a bit on the angsty side, yet totally understandable. She did in fact grow by the end of the book, a change that one can witness throughout the book but still mostly happens toward the end, where the story finally picks up - I did say that growth is usually paired with the way the plot moves along. She's your usual awkward teenager, not quite the usual YA heroine, since she's more like a damsel in distress at times and is the first one to recognize it. That's another aspect I liked about her, besides her love and loyalty toward her family.
As for other characters, the only other other character that's mentioned in the blurb is Jay. Now, you get little to nothing about Jay, and I dare say the blurb is a bit misleading, but I'll let y'all get your own idea. There's actually nothing much to say about him… yet. He's there, doesn't do much, but I expect a twist about him.
About the twists… I guess that, while they're so obvious (although not yet confirmed but again, extremely obvious) they are what got me in the end. They're what make me curious about the sequel and make me crave answers. I really just hope the next book's pace will pick up, I don't know whether I'd be able to bear such slowness again.

A really unique world, with the fascinating concept of different places on the globe becoming populated with a wide variety of unique monsters. I liked that the focus wasn't on the romantic elements, overall a fab book.

“All around the world, the Luminaries live near fourteen sleeping spirits. Each night, when the spirits dream, their nightmares come to life. And each night, the Luminary hunters guard the world against those nightmares, one clan for every day of the week.”

My thanks to Daphne Press for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Luminaries’ by Susan Dennard.

Hemlock Falls is different to other towns. It isn’t found on any map and there’s no phone signal. Worse though is that at night the forest outside town might just kill you….Creepy!

The protagonist of this novel is Winifred (Winnie) Wednesday, who is approaching her 16th birthday. She wants nothing more than to join the Luminaries, an ancient order that protects Hemlock Falls from the monsters and nightmares that rise in the forest of Hemlock Falls every night. There are groups of Luminaries throughout the world protecting humanity.

However, four years ago Winnie’s father was exposed as a witch and a spy for the Dianas, the Luminaries’ ancient enemy. He ran off but Winnie and her family were left behind and have been shunned ever since. In order to prove herself loyal and restore her family’s good name, Winnie is planning to take the deadly Luminary hunter trials starting on her 16th birthday.

She enlists the aid of the town’s resident bad boy and her former best friend, Jay Friday, to help her train. Together they discover a different kind of danger lurking in the woods, one that no one in Hemlock Falls is prepared for. No further details to avoid spoilers.

I was drawn initially by the striking cover of this YA paranormal fantasy and its premise sounded quite promising. However, I did feel that it read quite young. Perfect for teens in the age range of Winnie and her friends though less appealing to readers who have left sighing wistfully over whether a cute boy will ever notice them long in the past.

I found the story itself engaging with some intriguing aspects. I was eager for more information about these pockets of nightmare creatures and how the Dianas came to be considered the enemy. Perhaps the latter is because I tend to be more on the side of the witches. However, as ‘The Luminaries’ is the first in a series it could be that the author will reveal more in due course.

Aside from that stunning cover by Micaela Alcaino, the book has a few illustrations by Kirby Rosanes depicting creatures from the Luminary compendium.

Overall, I quite enjoyed ‘The Luminaries’ and was amused to read in the Acknowledgements that Susan Dennard had drawn on the hive mind of her fans (LumiNerds) using Twitter polls to determine aspects of the plot. It’s certainly an unusual technique.

The novel ended fairly abruptly, though this paves the way for Book 2, ‘The Hunting Moon’, due to be published in November. I plan to read it.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

I jumped at the chance to read this book, but it did take a lot to get into at first and I have lots of questions now I have finished! Will there be a sequel? Loved the romantic elements, and the style of writing did drew me in once I got going. Will definitely read more from this author

I had so much fun reading this YA paranormal Fantasy! It is the first book in a new series, and while it felt mostly like a foundation for the future installments (the ending left me with more questions than answers) it had a lot of fun elements and was overall an enjoyable read!

Paranormal fantasy usually isn’t my favorite, but I liked that this book serves a unique take on paranormal beings. That being said, I found it difficult to invest myself in the story or characters. My main issue was that the book doesn’t successfully portray the high stakes and the dark atmosphere of the forest surrounding Hemlock Falls.

Deaths are described as being everyday business, and losses are glossed over by Winnie and all the other characters. While I acknowledge that this is YA, I’d have found this much more successful if it had delved a little more into the fear and grief, as the indifference of the characters felt unrealistic, and made it hard for me to take the dangers seriously.

One of the elements I enjoyed most was the (very) subtle hint of romance. I highly appreciated that it wasn’t rushed at all, and I’m definitely interested in picking up the sequels to see how it develops and how the unresolved plot points are solved.

In short, this wasn’t a mind blowing read, but I’d recommend it to anyone who’s looking for something short and fun with a hint of mystery!

Being a huge Leigh Bardugo fan, when I saw her quote on the front of this book, I knew I had to read it, and I wasn’t disappointed. From the very first page, I could tell that The Luminaries was the start of what promises to be a very exciting new YA fantasy series.

The prologue made my spine tingle and the hairs on my arm stand up, and whilst the rest of the book was not as dark as this made me imagine it would be, The Luminaries was the perfect escapism from a day where my health saw me miserable, in pain and stuck in bed. Winnie’s experiences as she fights to become a Luminary hunter were a wonderful distraction from the real world. The world that Susan Dennard has created is rich with detail and I absolutely loved the pages from the Luminary compendium, complete with illustrations, that are included – a fully illustrated compendium would make a wonderful companion book to this series (hint, hint!) The inhabitants of Hemlock Falls make up a varied and well developed cast of characters, and I soon had my favourites among them. I very quickly became engrossed in their world and it was a real wrench when I had to leave it at the end of the book.

I finished The Luminaries with more questions than answers. I have a few suspicions about these though and I cannot wait until the next book so I can see if I am right about any of them.

In this book we follow Winnie on her quest to become a hunter of nightmares. Every night the forest in Hemlock Falls turns into a deadly trap. Nightmares spawn here, and the hunters of an ancient order called the Luminaries are tasked with protecting Hemlock Falls, and the rest of the world, from these terrible creatures.

All Winnie wants is to become one of them, a task easier said than done after her father was deemed a traitor and the whole family was branded as outcast because of it. But Winnie won’t give up her dream and decides to undergo the hunter trials despite what everyone else thinks of her.

So, this book has some really great parts, and some less great parts. I think the core of the story is great, and the premise and the idea here was super interesting. These nightmares in the woods and this hidden away town and the order. There were so many great things that made me interested in the story. And I think Winnie was a good character to tell this story.

The worldbuilding is good, and it’s incorporated in the story in such a way that it doesn’t feel like worldbuilding. It comes naturally and I really like that. The writing is also good and flows really well (even if I wish there’d been fewer teeth clicking). Dialogue seems natural and the characters are fairly well-developed.

I do think there’s a lot of unnecessary things going on here, though. It’s a bit slow. And the focus is always on Winnie’s feelings, and it gets a bit repetitive after a while. There are so many interesting things going on here that I’d like the focus to be on. Like the lore of this place, the history, the “magic school” and the monsters and the monster hunting. That’s the things I want to read about, not the same old thoughts and feelings that Winnie has over and over again.

But, this is a good book, and the writing is solid, and the world is well-developed and the characters too.

I do, however, feel like there were too many unresolved things in the end. It felt rushed and unfinished. When I really started to get into the book and didn’t want to put it down, I realized I was at over 90% in. At that point I realized I’d not be satisfied with the ending, and I was right. When the book started to take off, it was over, and there weren’t enough answers to all the questions and hints that had been planted. Sure, there will be a sequel, but personally, I want to feel satisfied after reading a book no matter if it’s the first in a series. I want to feel like the main threads in the book has been tied up. I don’t want to be left feeling like a massive question mark and flipping through the final pages thinking I must have missed something.

For me, this book is a solid 3.5 stars. It had the potential of a 5-star book, but ultimately fell a bit short due to pacing and lack of payoff in the end. I’ll roundup to 4 stars because I’m feeling nice today and I did enjoy reading this book for the most part.