I really thought this book was going to be for me. However, it got a little confusing and drawn out. I just couldn’t find myself connecting with it. I enjoyed when they used illustrations, but found myself wishing for more. If you like the mysterious unknown, this might be for you.

I finished this book several days ago and have been trying to come up with a non-spoiler-y review ever since.
Mysterious events are happening all around David, but nobody will tell him exactly what is going on. Told from the perspective of David as a child into his young adult years as he tries to solve the mysteries on his own, the reader also is kept in the dark as to what is really happening.
To review without giving any spoilers, I really liked this one; It was wonderfully weird and confusing and creepy. It was like reading the fever dream until everything made sense (but it still didn't quite make all of the sense).
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of Mothtown by Caroline Hardaker in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley for a ARC copy for an honest review.

I found ‘Mothtown’ by Caroline Hardaker interesting read it was good and I enjoyed reading it.
Rating: 4 Stars

★ ★ ★ ★ //5
Mothtown
by Caroline Hardaker

THOUGHTS:

I want to thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for giving me the opportunity to read an e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

This book was a little hard for me to rate. I gave it a 4 and I really really wanted to give it a 5. Here’s why I struggled with the rating. I struggled because I couldn’t figure out what I had just read. It took me a little bit to read and to get into and I had to ease into it. This book is odd and bizarre you guys BUT—I loved the oddness of the book and the bizarreness of this book. You absolutely need to pay attention to what is going on and follow along carefully. The ending was such a surprise that I did NOT see coming. I enjoy endings I never see coming. Honestly the authors writing is beautiful and the descriptiveness through the book was on point. I have actually already recommended this book to my particular friends whom I feel would love this book so much. I cannot wait to see how everybody else receives this book. Overall wonderful!!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an eARC of Mothtown in exchange for my honest review. One of my favorite aspects of Mothtown was its enigmatic and haunting prose, the way that it moves like silk across the page. The tension was also marvelously laid, and I enjoyed the movement back and forth between the past and present timelines--always such a hard technique to pull off, as I know from personal experience. I was impressed at how Hardarker handled the change in voice between each section, and the way the relationships are sketched in this book in such intricate detail. At points, the tension did seem to lag a bit, and it was initially difficult to place myself in the opening situation of the After sections, but these were minor issues that barely impacted my read.

If you enjoy an unreliable narrator, then this book is for you. Mothtown - a surreal mixture of dystopian horror - will leave you guessing every step of the way.

David is living in a world in which he does not fit. His beloved sister, Emily, whom he idolizes, seems to come by her belonging naturally. His mother and father don't understand him. The only person who he truly feels at home with - His Grandfather - has gone missing.

David is alone.

The story is split between two narratives - David as a child, wherein Caroline Hardaker unveils the unnerving and sinister world in which David exists. We learn about "The Modern Problem" and all of the lost people, those who became isolated and disconnected from the world bit by bit until truly becoming missing persons.

The second narrative is David as an adult, embarking on a journey, seeking answers to his questions - and struggling to understand the truth of his Grandfather's disapparance.

This book left me with a great deal of disquiet. It's not a book intended to leave you feeling at your ease. It paints a distressing picture of mental health and the ways in which society fails to support people who fall outside of the mold.

The overall "atmosphere-building" of this book is what sucked me into the story. There were also incredible illustrations that provided solid visualizations at just the right moments.

When David is told that his grandfather has passed away, he knows that he isn't truly dead - but has instead finally found the doorway to the world he'd been searching for all his life. David also knows that his Grandad would want him to follow...but he needs to figure out how.

Despite my confusion throughout most of this book, the style this is written in helped to keep me engaged. I'm so glad I pushed on to the end.
If you find that you're questioning "what the eff is going on??" - keep going!!

Thank you to NetGalley, as well as Angry Robot, for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

David has always been different. He has always known he doesn’t fit. And the one person who understood that was his Grandad, a physics professor in the area of dark matter. But his Grandad disappeared when David was eleven. His family said he died of a stroke, but David knows that isn’t true, he knows that Grandad found a doorway to another, better world,, one that he had long been searching for. And he knows that Grandad intended for David to be able to follow him. He just need to figure out how to do it.

I enjoyed this book but it’s definitely meant for a different audience, so I appreciated it more than I actually enjoyed it. I couldn’t really relate to David but lots of disaffected people may see themselves in him (and hopefully not in the creepy Blue Pilgrims who are out to “help” with the Modern Problem of ennui.) The book is divided into “then” and “now” sections, with the “now” sections being a bit odd and disjointed at first, but you soon settle in to both. Recommended if the subject matter described speaks to you….otherwise it’s probably not for you.

DNF - I had a hard time becoming immersed in this story so I've decided to stop where I'm at. I am interested in the story (the premise was so promising). I'll probably check for this story once it's been published.

Superb book !
Loosing a loved one is hard , but loosing the one person you connect with , who understands you hits even harder and deeper .Loosing the only person who is “ Home “ can have catastrophic effects on how your life plays out .

David realised from a young age that he was different , that things were not quite as they seemed and something was very very wrong in the town that he lived in . It was normal for people to go missing and was perfectly normal for bodies to appear in the mountains ….

Having a troubled and almost non existent relationship with his parents and sister David was quite the loner and loosing his grandfather - if he did truly die as he just disappeared led him into a depressive lonely young boy - often teased because he was different - leading you to believe he in sone form was disabled possibly on the spectrum ?

Fast forward to a 26 year old David - living to no surprise a very lonely and sheltered life that is until he receives a package , one with a note …. Was his grandad still alive after all ….

Not my usual go to book but really good and incredibly thought provoking !

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.

This book was, to put it simply, a work of art. So weird, creepy and visual, totally suffocating and all-consuming. At the core of the story it's just a kid who misses his grandad but with a lot more metaphor, creepy imagery, an epidemic and people not knowing if they exist or not. Superb!!!

If speculative horror is your thing, this is the book for you. I found it difficult initially to get into, but then it started to make sense. It goes between 'the before' and 'the after', where David is a young man, then an adult. David has a deep relationship with his grandfather and is devastated when he disappears. But this seems to be happening a lot in his neighborhood, people are disappearing, and coming back in pieces. As a child his grandfather used to read stories to him about a magical world and after awhile he becomes convinced that his grandfather is now in this world. As an adult he attempts to find him. While very well written, it meanders in places and is too long in the middle. When it gets back on track, you finally understand the transformation that David has to endure to leave the natural world. Will he make it back home? or find a new home with his grandfather? You'll need patience to see how this all plays out. A unique, disturbing tale of love, loss, loneliness, and finding yourself.

f you’re someone who gets freaked out VERY easily like me, I think you should either skip this book entirely or only read it during broad daylight (like I did). It was such a beautifully written book that it made up for the fact that I had a nightmare about it. And if I’m being completely honest, there wasn’t anything in particular that was genuinely frightening, the entire vibe of it was just… off putting.

I don’t know how it was possible that Hardaker created such a bleak, colorless world, but she did, and it was really well done. When I was reading this book, it was like everything was in black-and-white. It was really the perfect cold fall weather read.

My only issue was that this book seem to drag on near the end. I was a little bored by the time this book wrapped up, even with the visceral, descriptive - sometimes too descriptive - details. Again, this book was beautifully written, but I think Hardaker fell into the trap of overexplaining things. But maybe if I were a horror fan, I might’ve appreciated it a little more. Who knows?

Mothtown is a surreal masterpiece: strange, horrifying and deeply upsetting. It's very difficult to talk about without spoiling anything--and this is a book I think really is best experienced blind--but another reviewer comped it to Vita Nostra by the Dyachenkos, which I actually think is brilliant. Very different cultural contexts and plots aside, the experience of reading the two titles is very similar, and unlike anything I've encountered elsewhere: a slow and gorgeous unspooling of normalcy until it feels like sanity itself is unravelling; a growing sense that things are very, very wrong even while the narrator insists that really, everything is fine. This definitely isn't a book for everyone, and one I'd hesitate to recommend except to a very particular kind of reader--but I am definitely that reader. It was bonkers and messed up and I loved every word.

Many thanks to Angry Robot and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley and Angry Robot Publishing for the arc. Opinions are my own and freely given.

3.5 stars. Definitely some mixed feelings with this. I actually think it’ll be better as a re-read. I don’t want to spoil anything in this review, but this novel really artistically touches on deep subjects in a unique way.

This is truly the most bizarre book I’ve read this year. I was confused for most of the book and just trying to piece together what was going on. I feel like it was somewhat hard to really get into because I was constantly unsure of what was really happening. The end of the novel definitely helps explain the rest and I’m happy I stuck with it; however, I do think it may lose some people because of how odd and surreal a majority of the book is. I definitely did not predict anything of the ending, so that’s always a nice surprise.

The writing in this is beautiful though and I do think that helped me stay engaged. Some of the descriptions were a bit disjointed and left me wandering, visually, what was going on. I loved the illustrations and thought that was a lovely touch.

This one is hard to review without spoilers!

The beginning is so well written, you’re immediately wanting more! With that said, I found the rest of the book fell flat.

This doesn’t fall into just one genre which I appreciated, it was unlike anything I have ever read before.

A strange and enchanting mix of dystopia, horror, and sci-fi. Every time I thought I'd pinned down what was happening, the book pushed and pulled in a different direction. It managed to both create an overwhelming sense of loneliness, longing and need for another life, and then just as well dismantle it all in a horrifying transformation. Very much enjoyed.

I was very confused with the structure of the story. I think maybe I just wasn't the intended audience.

This one was very spooky and I wish I’d saved it for October. I had a great time reading it and I’d definitely recommend it to others who are looking to be spooked by their reading. An easy recommend for sure!