Haunting, eerie, and unique, Caroline Hardaker captured my heart and soul with Mothtown (and not to mention the fabulous illustrations by Chris Riddell which were pure perfection). Mothtown had a way of drawing me in, and keeping me returning to find out what happened to David. The atmosphere is thick, and the characters are well fleshed out, Mothtown gave me T. Kingfisher vibes in the best possible way!
I have every intention of sourcing some other Caroline Hardaker books in the future, and so should you 😏.

Unfortunately, I was unable to download this book before it was archived and so am leaving this as a review/explanation as I didn't know what else to do after finding a few books I had managed to miss in a section of my account entitled Not Active: Archived, Not Downloaded; so I thought it best to clear it up. I have already bought a copy and will leave a review on places like Amazon, Goodreads, Waterstones, etc, once I've completed it and formed my thoughts on it. Apologies for any inconvenience and thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher Angry Robot for the digital ARC, it has not affected my honest review.

TW: grief, violence, injury, mental illness, unreliable narrator

“Mothtown” is a strange tale but I was hooked from the first page. There is no one in the world that young David loves more than his explorer grandfather, the two of them are different from everyone else in a world that no one will explain but with Grandad, David feels seen and understood even as people go missing and bodies are found with wings. They're so connected that they've created their own language as David's parents turn off the news whenever he enters a room and his elder sister ignores what's happening around them seemingly on purpose. However, when David is ten years old, he is told by his parents that Grandad has died while on a research trip, looking for a mysterious mountain and a place named Mothtown. David can't believe that Grandad would leave his precious travelling backpack or orange jumper behind, and it soon becomes clear that Grandad has disappeared like so many other people have. And in the future, we follow David as an adult as he seeks out Mothtown for himself, fleeing through hostile wilderness and people hunting him in order to find the answers he needs.

I have no idea how to explain how I feel about this story, partly because it's such a mixture of genres and also because of spoilers. Parts of this I really enjoyed, particularly the tense moments we spend with adult David as he searches for the truth, while others- more specifically the background mysteries- weren't as well developed as I would have liked. For most of the book it felt very wandering, with David's narration veering off in both the past and the present. I loved the character of Grandad and what he meant to David, but the oppressive atmosphere of this book means its one I probably won't come back to.

I was really excited about this book, based on the premise, genre, and the cover. I could not get through it.
"Mothtown" offers a peculiar mix of speculative fiction and horror, detailing the life of David, a quiet boy with a grandfather fascinated by multiverse doorways, who disappeared mysteriously.
The overwhelming writing style filled with excessive similes (how many do you need per page?!) was distracting and it wasn't easy to get into the book.
The pacing, alternating between past and present, was confusing and disrupted the narrative flow, in my opinion. I see a lot of 5-star reviews so clearly, the book has its audience. Maybe I will revisit it at some point but for now, it just did not seem worth the time to suffer through.

Thank you for the ARC, NetGalley!

I am not entirely sure how to describe Mothtown, but I know I loved it. The reader just has to give in and not try to understand everything. The sooner you realise just how unreliable the narrator is, the better. The atmosphere was great and really got to my bones. I am sure that it would be a great hit with anyone looking for a fever dream of a novel, and those who enjoy not being sure if they are reading a magical realism novel or a psychological lit fic.
The illustrations were beautiful! I don't hate the cover but I am a bit disappointed that it is not in that style.

Blending elements of horror and literary fiction, "Mothtown" offers a gripping and eerie tale that will captivate readers with its dark and suspenseful narrative.

Mothtown By Caroline Hardaker

‘She was everything. She was the sun. But now she stumbled and tripped just as much as I did, and it didn't sit easy with me. She was meant to be the example of everything I wasn't.
A person perfectly suited to her world. A chameleon. Dad's favourite. She'd always shaped things around her, like a flame melting wax around it. But tonight, she didn't look well at all. And she couldn't even meet my eye. And so our minds, once linked as intricately as Russian nesting dolls, were finally exposed to be what they had been for years: brutally and irreversibly apart.’

Mothtown is the story of David. A man who never truly feels grounded in his reality, never really feels like he belongs, his one constant his grandfather paves the way for the stories narrative.

Mothtown is split across two timelines, the before and the after, which come to be after a life changing incident causes his life to fracture and to further disassociate from his perceptions of reality.

Bodies begin turning up around his town, with pieces that shouldn’t be there and clues that lead David to believe his person is still alive, somewhere else which sets his quest in motion to get to the truth and the other reality he desperately wants to be part of.

The book really made me think of the tv show United States of Tara where traumatic events lead to dissociation and bringing “alter” personalities to the forefront as a sort of protection measure. The trauma David goes through and the way he fragments as the story goes on was so cleverly written as a breakdown has never been written so well on a page.

There is a constant sense of dread as you work your way through the story, and from early on you can probably work out where and how David’s story will play out.

The writing style of Mothtown is nothing short of poetic, and the attention to detail of describing the breakdowns and breakthroughs are so thoughtfully written that you can’t help but break along with him.

Cannot recommend this book enough.
Thanks to angry robots

Mothtown is an eerie mix of horror, mystery, and speculative fiction that is for anyone who loves atmospheric writing and suspending your senses. Told from the perspective of our main character, David, from childhood and then adulthood, we as the audience piece together a community grappling with an epidemic of missing people. At least, "missing" is what we're led to believe they are, at first. As the perspectives shift, we begin to realize that transformations beyond reality are taking place - both disturbing and misunderstood by the local community. The impacts of David's sheltered upbringing, alongside this unraveling mystery, reflect a slow realization that parallels the theme of transformation throughout the book.

I saw some reviews say that this book feels like a puzzle, and I couldn't agree more. I appreciate Hardaker's attempt to translate that feeling onto pages, and to do it while engaging with hard topics such as grief, depression, loneliness, is a testament to her skill!

Mothtown is an ode to grief. It's dark, eerie and atmospheric. It had me on the edge of my seat, guessing up until the last page! I just couldn't believe the rollercoaster of emotion it took me through, it snuck up on me out of nowhere! Incredibly well done. Highly recommend!!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.

This book is very different than anything I have previously read, and is such a unique blend of genres that sometimes it feels very horror, sometimes sci-fi, and sometimes it has a more lit fic feel to it. Definitely a book to go into with an open mind, but if you are into the weird, complex stories then I would highly recommend it.

This book felt less like reading, and more like playing a horror video game. This is a complement, it feels like an intentional choice that the prose is flat and propels itself forward from one event to the next. The game SOMA came to mind as I read. There is a sense of dislocated horror combined with a step-by-step forward motion, so that rather than 'reading' it felt as if I was working through a game or a puzzle to get to the end. The drawings were a great addition. There was an loose ease in the prose that I enjoyed, too, for instance--

'My ankle is hot and loose, as if all of the bones are lost. '

'Grandad smelled like iron. '

'In the village, she stuck out like a crow. '

'Ours was a village where the curtains never closed, but no one touched. '

"The air in the study tasted very thin.'

Inventive, interesting, and enjoyable.

Oh man. What a book. I had no idea what to expect going in, and I might have been confused for 3/4 of the book, but it is well worth it. The pay off is very good.

Go into it with an open mind and enjoy the ride.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

I had the good fortune of listening to the audiobook of this title, which was absolutely riveting. Gorgeous prose, and a richly vivid internal life for our protagonist. It was a stark and gutting portrayal of grief, and had me sobbing more than once. A difficult book, but a marvelous one. I'm not 100% convinced it stuck the landing, but the ride was assuredly worth it.

This is a compelling read, focusing on David, a young man who wants to follow in his grandfather's footsteps. Grandad left when David was a boy, and David spends the book searching for clues as to his grandfather's whereabouts. There are many others who feel similarly, and the England where David lives is grappling with the "Modern Problem" of people disappearing from their lives, seeking something more in a place called Mothtown.
David is the most unreliable of narrators, and much of the story is left for the reader to piece together from fragments told from David's perspective. The author does a wonderful job of putting you in David's head, and you can really feel his pain and sadness.
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the ending here; I think it's fitting but at the same time I'm left wanting a little more.
All in all, a great way to start a new year of books.

If you are uncomfortable with ambiguity in a narrative, as well as the use of more than one timeline in a story, don’t bother with this book.

If, on the other hand, you’re intrigued by multiple, mysterious, questionable and enigmatic situations, an ever-growing sense of unease as the story progresses, and never quite understanding what is going on, all described by beautiful prose, with some truly lovely turns of phrase, then this book is for you.

Caroline Hardaker agains melds science fiction, fantasy, horror, family dynamics (some would agree that family can be fertile ground for horror), and grief together, to create a story about David Porter, who, when he was young, was deeply affected by the death of his grandfather Francis. His grandfather was a physicist, who had an abiding interest in the concept of multiverses, to the extent that he lost the respect of the scientific community. Francis and David shared their own language together, and David felt that Francis was the only person who fully understood him.

David never believes his family about Francis’ disappearance from his life, instead becoming convinced that the man found a way to another universe. His parents and sister don’t answer David’s questions, at least to his liking, and shield David from the news, which is full of unhappy events, including the disappearances, everywhere, of people.

All this only fuels David’s insistence on finding Francis. Already a quiet, sensitive child, David grows into a socially inept, isolated young man, who holds strange ideas and fascinations. David becomes reclusive, and decides to embark on a journey to join Francis, seeking guidance in conspiracy theories and portents.

This is one weird book, where one never feels fully certain what is going on. This sense of doubt is augmented by the two narratives, one of which follows young David, the other adult David.

Hardaker builds the sense of unease by continuing to mention all the strange disappearances from David’s youth onwards, even while adult David is disappearing from his family and into his search for Francis, through some truly bizarre behaviours.

Hardaker eventually reveals what is really going on, and it’s a well handled, unsettling depiction of David’s mental health, from the inside. It’s also a story of a dysfunctional family that does not know how to connect with each other, and shuts down all of David’s questioning and misunderstandings, only further driving David into himself.

It’s a book that leaves the reader constantly destabilized, and paints gorgeous and terrifying images as David searches for a way to find meaning in his life.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Angry Robot for this ARC in exchange for my review.

3.5 rounded up to 4.

A completely unique, dark story that had me desperate to know what was going to happen. This book is most definitely one you will remember for a long time. It is strange and unique and for this reason I feel it may be a bit polarising but I would suggest picking it up and giving it a go.

Also massive thank you to the publisher for sending me out a paperback version of this book!

Thank you Netgalley for the advance reader copy of Mothtown by Caroline Hardaker in exchange for an honest review. I really struggled to get into this book. It might have been my headspace or it just wasn't my cup of tea. I liked the premise and really tried hard to read it.

In this hybrid of several genres, a young David slowly discovers (through some dazzling prose) rumors of missing people may be true, one of which who is his grandfather. His parents are trying to keep him from some kind of situation that’s being reported on the news, and just when we think we have things figured out, the story flashes forward to David as an adult, slowing down the reveal of this incredibly strange mystery.

Before/after story telling often becomes tiresome, but in Hardaker’s hands it not only enhances the bizarre goings-on, it makes David more than your typical unreliable narrator. I’m guessing those not into offbeat fiction will give up after a few chapters, but those thirsting for something original are in for a major treat.

Each chapter is a head-scratching slice of the bizarre, yet things become clear as the tale reaches its heart-breaking climax. Like a David Lynch film, it’s difficult to describe MOTHTOWN in a brief review, but fans of weird fiction will surely savor this dark, surreal journey, which I’ll be contemplating for quite a while.

Mothtown is a book with an extremely intriguing premise. It is original and atmospheric but it also doesn't seem to know what it wants to be, is it Horror? Sci-fi? Literary? YA? A mix of all of the things?
Unfortunately I didn’t find this book enjoyable and found it a struggle to finish. The plot seems overly complex and intentionally confusing. The dual timelines follow our protagonist David from the age of 10 to the age of 26 (approx) It is a stream of consciousness narrative which has some incredibly vivid and haunting prose but I feel that the author sometimes got carried away with this and it became a little too much. However, The themes of this story are important ones and the ending does leave you with a sense of resolution and I’m certain that many readers will enjoy this book.
Thanks to Angry Robot Publishing and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

Mothtown stands out as one of the most peculiar books I've read this year and one that I fully recommend. It is a horror story that constantly asserts its intention to shake the ground beneath you, leaving you in a state of imbalance. With a feeling of grief and a sense of alienation, it unfurls a series of consistently unsettling and unhinged scenes that captivate the reader from the very first page. The prose is mesmerizing, pulling you into its warmth while prompting an examination of the unfolding story.

Caroline Hardaker skillfully demonstrates the ability to craft a novel that blends reality, horror, and a touch of magic. Her narrative ensures that readers are not mere spectators but active participants, questioning the very essence of the tale they find themselves immersed in.

I am compelled to withhold further details, sensing that Mothtown is a story crafted to be experienced uniquely by each reader, and I'm not going to be the one to ruin that for anyone.