Wow. This book was a beautiful read. The Appalachian setting was magical - isolated and ominous but with gorgeous and feral nature surrounding these characters. The murder on the mountain almost takes a backseat to the folklore- Angie draws cards that have a powerful and uncontrollable magic of their own, the mountain provides and takes away at will, and their aunt has her own history with that power. The sisters as characters were complex and fleshed-out, frustrating at times and incredibly sad at others. There is an undercurrent of generational trauma that influences their actions, and those of their mother and aunt, and I really felt drawn into the day to day of their lives.

I fully recommend to anyone who enjoys folk horror, Appalachian settings, rural gothic vibes with a sprinkling of coming-of-age.
Huge thanks to @netgalley @titanbooks and @ailsa.alering for a copy to read and review.

Thank you Netgalley for the advance copy. I really loved the book and its characters. I can see that the author spent a long time on worldbuilding and forming 3 dimensional characters. This was already on my wish-list for the year, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy. I loved the read and can’t wait to see what the author comes up with next!

Appalachia is a place where I'm used to seeing horror; it's a creepy setting that writers have returned to time and time again over the years. And whilst I'm used to seeing it in a historical setting Smothermoss surprised me by being a more modern Appalachian horror; though the 1980's is now classed as a historical setting and that alone feels like something that should elicit horror.

Smothermoss tells the story of two teenage sisters, Sheila and Angie. Sheila is the older of the two, seventeen years old, and lives with her thirteen year old sister Angie, their great aunt, and their mother. Whilst their mother is out working every hour she can get at the local asylum Sheila has to step up and run the household. Added on top of this, the family is poor, struggling to get by, and Sheila is the target of relentless bullying by her peers. Life isn't great for her. When two young women are murdered close to their home on the remote mountain trail, Sheila and Angie set out to find out what happened.

Despite having a relatively short length of just over two hundred and fifty pages, Smothermoss never feels light, and Alisa Alering packs a lot into the pages of her debut novel. However, there are times where there was so much happening within the book that I did on occasion feel a little lost, and wondered if perhaps I was missing some details or two. This could also be down to the fact that there's a lot of strangeness in Smothermoss, the kind of horror that blurs the lines between real and the bizarre, and leaves you questioning if what you read was real, or simply the strange imaginings of our central characters.

The book is very dark too, and there's a heavy tone to it from the very first few pages. The atmosphere is bleak, and at times outright oppressive, and despite our characters living out in the beuatiful nature of Appalachia it feels more claustrophobic than you'd think. Nature is less something of beauty here, and more of an oppressive and even brutal force that shapes the lives of all those who live within in. There are few moments to be found where our characters get a chance to smile or joke around, and the joy that does happen is so fleeting it almost feels like it doesn't happen. This somewhat plays into the imaginary worlds that play a large part in the narrative, ways in which Sheila and Angie are able to escape from the horror and misery of their everyday life.

Magic realism is a bit part of the story, and because of this it can sometimes be hard to discern if things are real or not. Is there really an invisible, magical rope around Sheila's neck that ties her to the mountains, or is this just her imagination conjuring a metaphor for her situation? The book doesn't really provide an answer, or at least one that I picked up on, and as such leaves a lot down to the readers to decide. You can come away from Smothermoss having experienced a story steeped in the magical and mystical, whilst another person can read the book and dismiss a lot of those moments as simply not being real. It's a novel that each reader is going to get something a little different from.

The novel also has a lot of themes for growing up, for navigating teenage life, and exploring queerness and gender identity and expression. But it also feels a little like Alering was a bit reluctant to fully explore this in any great depth. Again, much like the supernatural side of things, readers can come away with different reads on the characters and their journeys, and the reluctance to take a firm stance means that some important themes can likely be easily brushed off, seen more as audience projection that actual content within the book.

I'm still not sure exactly how I feel about Smothermoss. There are a lot of parts that I really liked, whilst there were others that I failed to connect with and didn't really understand. Despite being a short book it felt like a long, heavy read at times, and there was certainly a lot going on within the pages. Smothermoss might really connect with you, however, and the fact that it didn't with me is by no means a condemnation of it. I'm probably just not the ideal reader for it; but there will absolutely be readers out there that are going to love it.

I must have a thing for the Appalachians, I have a lot of favourite books set in the region. Daryl Gregory's Revelator, Sharyn McCrumb's Ballad series, Chris Offutt's Mick Hardin books and especially Alex Bledsoe's Tufa novels. I believe Alisa Alering's debut novel Smothermoss fits in equally with all these great titles.
The tale of two sisters 5 years in age apart, Shelia has an invisible rope around her throat that drags at her life. When she finally discovers someone who can see the rope it turns out to be someone that no one else can see. The younger Angie believes she has to train for the enviable Russian Invassion, or perhaps Zombies. She spends a lot of time drawing a home made Tarot deck that has a life of it's own, sometimes useful, most times not.
Into their world comes a killer, two female hikers are bashed to death. Angie is determined to capture the killer that the police can find no trace, even if it means dragging her sister into danger.
Dont expect answers to all the mysteries, just revel in the beautiful writing in this Appalachian set magical realism novel.

This was a weird one for me. I loved the setting and thought the author did a great job of creating an Appalachian family struggling to make ends meet in the 80's. I really enjoyed both Sheila and Angie and thought their relationship as sisters felt believable and raw. My issue was with the plot, or lack thereof I guess. The hunt for a murderer was very secondary to the atmosphere and strange happenings and too much was left unexplained for my liking. Overall, I would read from the author again, but this one wasn't my favourite.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publishers for sending me a copy in exchange for a review.

This was blurbed with heavy emphasis on a murder in the Appalachian mountains but it is so much more than that and the murders seem to fade into the background as we delve into the lives of a family living in poverty, and two girls trying to understand the world around them as well as themselves.

I wouldn't go into this with a view that it is going to be more of a thriller or a horror as is blurbed, but almost a folktale with magical realism. You are going to be frustrated by this family, but also root for them viciously, as well as feel keenly the devastation that poverty can do to a life.

A beautiful, hunger pang of a book.

While I am from the UK I have been researching the Appalachia Mountains and from what I’ve read or seen of people talking about the landscape I want to say that Alering captures the grandeur and suffocation of the location. Smothermoss ticks a lot of my boxes because it combines genres I like such as magical realism, folklore and fairy tales (of the Grimm variety) and a sprinkle of horror.

For me the thing that really worked was the setting and more importantly how Alering brings the world to life. You can almost hear the birds in the trees and wind whistling. On top of this the characters are incredibly well grounded and believable. While I couldn’t quite gel with Sheila I did understand her and where she was coming from. Thena and Angie were my favourites though. I liked how as readers we learnt with the characters and while the world had a hint of magic and mystery to it, we (or at least I), come to accept it being fact.

Now the only thing I didn’t like was some of the animal imagery used. I realise the characters live out in the forest so it makes sense. It’s just one of my triggers. That said Alering does use this to show how the girls live and tie deeper into the mountains and locations. As such, since it wasn’t just for shock value, I was able to accept it. That said, slight spoiler to follow, I nearly had to take a break when I thought the dog was going to die.

All that aside if you love books with some dark Wimsey, folklore and magical realism you are bound to enjoy this one.

Thank you so much to Titan Books and Netgalley for my copy. My review is left voluntarily and is honest.

Now, this is how you do magical realism. Within the framework of consensus reality, uncanny, inexplicable and/or dreamlike things occur—but they have weight in the world. Actions have consequences. When a mysterious tunnel into a cave disappears, it means a twelve-year-old girl doesn't have an escape route from a dangerous man; when a torn-up drawing reappears, whole, it means a seventeen-year-old gets mad at her sister, thinking she's playing a trick. The two girls are Sheila (17) and Angie (12), half-sisters living in backwoods Pennsylvania in the 1980s with "the old woman" (not their grandmother, possibly Angie's great-aunt, though not Sheila's) and their mother, Bonnie, who works at the local asylum. Sheila has learned to become invisible in plain sight to avoid bullying at school, and is ruthlessly suppressing both her physical appetite and her queerness as part of her quest for perfect self-control. Angie is a palpably odd child who lives in a mostly private world of Rambo movies, Russian invasion threat, and nuclear annihilation. The girls are drawn into the hunt for a murderer when two women are brutally killed on the nearby Appalachian Trail. (This might be based on the real-life killings of Julianne Williams and Lollie Winans, which occurred in 1996 and have never been solved; another likely analogue is Rebecca Wight and Claudia Brenner, a lesbian couple attacked on the Trail, in 1988, though Brenner survived).

Smothermoss has a creepy rural Gothic feel, partly because of Angie's hand-drawn, homemade tarot-like deck, which, instead of cups, pentacles and swords, contains entities like the Worm King, the Blood Double, and the Truthteller. Angie doesn't know where these entities come from; the cards seem to have a life of their own, and though they sometimes assist the girls, other times they can be frightening or inscrutable. The old woman, Thena, tells stories about her girlhood on the mountain with troubling undertones of violence and coercion. Sheila has an invisible rope around her neck, which regularly snags on countertops and branches—the only other person who can see it is a mysterious teenage boy she keeps meeting when she gets a job dishwashing at the local asylum, who appears invisible to others. Yet the environment through which the girls move is a recognisably rooted time and place: teenage girls drink grape Ne-hi, Playboy magazines are everywhere, Hee Haw is on TV, and Thena remembers when the mine shafts with which the mountain is riddled were active. The connections between the real world and the fantastical elements are what made this novel work for me; Sheila's rope is obviously connected both to her nascent recognition of her own queerness and to her warring desires to escape the mountain and to never leave it. There was something a little lacking in the evocation of place, though, perhaps precisely because of the fantastical elements. Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, for example, is a far more specific, and therefore effective, portrait of Appalachian communities. Smothermoss is a worthwhile way to spend a few hours of a sticky summer afternoon, though.

I really liked the premise of this book, and the atmosphere was set up incredibly well, very creepy and unsettling at times. I also enjoyed both main characters, and their different perspectives on their lives. Angie was my favourite and I was intrigued by her plot with the cards.
Unfortunately the atmosphere wasn't enough to carry the book for me, although there were some really well written sections and things that intrigued me, overall the plot felt messy and unsure of itself. This may have been intentional, as it did contribute to the creepy vibe of the book, but I personally prefer the plot to become clear in the end.
It felt like there was wasted potential in some of the threads that didn't go as far as they could, especially with the cards and the Boy. I also personally didn't really understand the rope, I could almost see what it was trying to do but it fell flat for me unfortunately.
I will freely admit that I am quite new to this genre of folk horror so some of these things might be staples of the genre that I'm not a fan of, rather than things that make the book "bad" .
I can definitely see people loving this book and think this is just the case of me not being the right reader. I loved the way it spoke about the violence of nature, as well as the LGBT themes which were well done. Loved the vibes but I wanted a bit more.

Smothermoss; a tale about two sisters living along the Appalachian trail, Shelia the eldest who holds a lot of responsibility involving taking care of their home, rabbits and great aunt, and Angie, a young girl who acts like Rambo and wishes for a Russian war so she can fight zombies, and creates tarot-like cards, their lives are drawn to the murder of two girls somewhere along the same trail.

This premise was very intriguing but overall, the story fell flat.

The chapters change in perspectives, switching between reality and imaginary and I get it's supposed to be mysterious and create intrigue about what is real and what isn't, but this was too confusing to me. It might just be me, but half the time I had to reread chapters and make notes on what happened in case it would get mentioned again. It doesn't help that the events of this book were not paced well. Several times I would read something and then go "oh it's been a few months since this happened then".

I want to say the characters made this story more worthwhile, but they didn't. Shelia and Angie were very 1-dimensional and only really have character growth towards the last few chapters of the book. I only really liked their mother, who I thought was written well with the information given about her past, despite the little influence she has in the story.

The only things that saved this story and resulted in a 2.5 rating, would be Alisa's writing for the forest and moutain, and how she weaves clues about the characters and the plot were done very well. The forest and mountains were described effectively to creep me out when reading this book and I really liked that. The idea that nature is dangerous is a trope that I admire in books, and I really liked it here. Plus the artwork at the beginning of the chapters helped with the creepiness.

Overall, this had the making of a great, creepy tale but the execution was lacking.

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for the e-arc in exchange for a free, voluntary review.

This is such a weird little book. I don't really know what I think about it and how to review it. For one, I went into this with vastly different expectations based on the blurb. I was expecting more of a horror thriller type of story with the murder in the description taking more of a center stage. The book is not that. There are horror elements, there's a dark and depressing setting, but I'd call it more of a literary fiction peace with magical realism elements and some horror sprinkled on top. It was a fascinating read and it's definitely well-written, but it's also very slowly paced and nothing much is happening. That can work great, but with all the elements of the book I was just waiting for something... more. I did really like both of the protagonists, the sisters Sheila and Angie, and found both of their stories incredibly intriguing. I just wasn't very invested in what was going on.
A good and imaginative debut for sure, but more of a middle of the road rating from me.

akA dark, twisted tale from the Appalachian Mountains about the monsters both within us and the dangers we can face as Women and Girls.
I rounded this up to a 4 star from a 3.75 - the strengths of this book lay in its eerieness, atmosphere and poetic language. I am not the main target for it, as I know and read little American Horror lit, however the premise intrigued me as well as the setting so I gave it a go. Reading it in July during the time of Summerween and Summer Camps Slasher Tales was especially fitting.
Characters: While I had a hard time warming up to one of the sisters, Angie, in the beginning, I instantely felt drawn to Sheila and the challenges she faces as an outsider in school as well as within her circumstances growing up in Poverty with a Single Mother, her sister she's not close to at all as well as the old woman they live with. The more I read, the more I saw myself in Angie too, the weird kid who, contrary to her sister, doesn't care about blending in.
Aspects: I adored the folklore horror elements, the setting in-between the Appalachian Mountains with its challenges of poverty and lack of opportunities for anyone who differs from the norm. The book is set in the 1980s and while I wasn't alive yet, to me it really captured the sense of the time away from the grand city life (my parents grew up similarily).
Storytelling: Not always coherent to me which I actually preferred in this context, I could always follow up with the storyline a few pages later.
All in all a well rounded horror novel perfect for dark Summer or Autumn days.

Thank you, @netgalley and @titanbooks, for the advance reader copy of this amazing book. And to @alisa.alering for this masterpiece!

🐰 I don't know where to start with this review!

I loved his book. I devoured this book! Do I know what really happened in the book? ... No! Do I know how it made me feel? ... Yes!

The story follows two sisters, Sheila 17, who is battling her own demons, an eating disorder, wrestling with her sexuality and also an invisible rope around her neck which keeps her on the edge of death. I thought the rope was a metaphor, but uniquely, it is real.

The other Sister Angie is 12, obsessed with playing soldiers, she imagine she is Rambo and runs around the mountain where they live with a tea towel on her head, expecting to find a Russian invasion and singlehandedly take them down! I loved her. She is also touched by the same magic her sister is, but this manifests in cards she is guided into drawing and distributing.

There is also a killer on the loose who has killed two women and is now on the run. Like I said, I have no idea what really happened in this book, but I know how it made me feel. I loved both of the sisters and felt their individual struggles, hopes, and happiness jumping off the pages. I felt the 17 year old angst of trying to find yourself and your place in the world from Sheila and not a child, not yet a teenager, feelings from Angie.

🐰 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐦𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐲, 𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫, 𝐟𝐮𝐧, 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤, 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐰𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐚 𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐛𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐭. 🔪

Smothermoss is a wild fever dream about a family of impoverished women set in the beautifully described appalachian mountains.

It's been a long time since I've read anything quite like what Alering achieves here. A disorientating blend of reality and imagination, written in third not only from the perspectives of sisters Sheila and Angie, but also of the mountain itself.
Rabbits are people are rabbits are foxes are mountains are ghosts, it's all a bit nuts but still so engaging.

The allegory is thick throughout the pages of Smothermoss, particularly in the invisible rope around Sheila's neck and the horrifying sketches Angie feels compelled to draw. Unfortunately the deeper meaning behind the boy in this novel flew over my head, I felt it was there but I didn't quite reach it, such was the chaos.

Aside from a single clumsy paragraph on page one, (I had my partner read it too and we both agreed it made no sense) I really enjoyed Alering's writing style. Even in it's most abstract moments, of which there are many, the prose was straight forward leaving me just enough understanding to follow this wildly unhinged story to it's conclusion.

The murder isn't really a mystery, more an exclamation point in another monotone summer for Sheila who struggles with sexuality and eating disorders, and Angie who desperately wants to become a hero by defeating the Russians in 80s rural America.

A sweltering, suffocating horror perfect for summer reading.

This book was bleak, gothic and creepy - all things I really enjoy in a story. Following Shelia and her family who are living in extreme poverty in the Appalachian mountains, we watch her grapple with her sense of identity whilst being dragged into a hunt for a killer who brutally murdered two young women.

I found the way the story was written a little confusing at first, with it being written in the 3rd person but from different character perspectives with no defined line between each one - by which I mean within one chapter we could be following something going in with Sheila and then switch to her sister as she is then doing something - almost like flitting between scenes in a film.

There was also the strange almost fairytale quality of chapters relating to the mountain. But once you get used to the style, it actually really works.

Such a fabulous book that deals with some really important themes and I devoured it.

I really liked this, the writing and the vibes were immaculate and it was really weird. I didn’t know what was going on at times but I still really enjoyed the ride!

Really enjoyed this bizarre folk horror coming of age. Loved the setting and the nature elements. Found the mystery compelling and the sisters' relationship rang true.

Smothermoss is a novel about two sisters in 1980s Appalachia, drawn into the mystery of two murdered hikers. Sheila is seventeen and spends her time tending their garden and rabbits, worrying about her growing certainty that she likes girls, and trying to tame her younger sister, Angie. Angie is twelve, obsessed with Rambo, Russian spies, and her self-created deck of cards that seem to speak to her. When two women are killed on the Appalachian trail, Angie wants to find the murderer, and Sheila is contending with strange visions and a rope-like weight around her neck.

This is a difficult book to define, perhaps marketed with horror and murder mystery elements, but really feeling like an uncanny coming of age novel, perhaps with hints of Appalachian gothic. It is a hazy novel that moves through a summer without that much actually happening, and even the climactic end felt a bit underwhelming, but if you read that as more of a story of two teenage girls and their weirdness, that works a lot better. Sheila and Angie are really memorable characters and were definitely the highlight of the novel, whilst their mother felt like a very absent character, reflecting how much she's not in their lives.

Whilst I was expecting Smothermoss to have more of a horror/mystery plot, I did like its slow uncanny coming of age vibe. It reminded me of other rural gothic type novels about girls coming of age, though I feel like I've not read any Appalachian ones before.

I usually like dark and weird stories but this felt as if reading something that tried too hard to be weird... If that makes sense? Very disjointed stories that were supposed to be connected but I struggled though it.