Book Tour: SO WITCHES WE BECAME review

Thank you so much to TBR and Beyond Tours for allowing me to take part in this tour for So Witches We Became. I adore queer books and I've discovered that I have a weird sort of love for the ones that are a bit freaky and dark. This book definitely looked right up my alley.

 

     

About The Book:

Title: So Witches We Became

Author: Jill Baguchinsky

Pub.Date: July 23, 2024

Find it:

If boys will be boys, girls will fight back.

For high school senior Nell and her friends, a vacation house on a private Florida island sounds like the makings of a dream spring break. But Nell brings secrets with her — secrets that fuse with the island’s tragic history, trapping them all with a curse that surrounds the island in a toxic, vengeful mist and the surrounding waters with an unseen, devouring beast.

Getting out alive means risking her friendships, her sanity, and even her own life. In order to save herself and her friends, Nell will have to face memories she’d rather leave behind, reveal the horrific truth behind the encou nter that changed her life one year ago, and face the shadow that’s haunted her since childhood.

Easier said than done.

But when Nell’s friends reveal that they each brought secrets of their own, a solution even more dangerous than the curse begins to take shape.

Perfect for fans of Courtney Summers and Rory Power and reading like a YA feminist spin on Stephen King’s The Mist, So Witches We Became is a diverse, queer horror about female friendship, the emotional aftermath of surviving assault, and how to fi nd power in the shadows of your past.

Content Warning: Discussion of sexual assault, sexual harassment, death of an animal (killing of a fish), violence and gore

 

Review:

This was a very pleasant surprise to me. I was imagining a lot of things when I first read the summary for this book. There were a lot of ways that I thought it could succeed or fail. Things that could possibly make or break this book for me. Thankfully, I didn't have to be worried about most of it.

I'm just coming off reading a horror anthology, so this book clearly felt like a really good follow-up to that. The writing in this book was just *chef's kiss*. It had me on a ledge and waiting for permission to just dive fully into the story. I was hooked!

The plot building in this story was excellently well-done. There were things that were introduced in the beginning that actually played a part towards the end of the book. It was honestly just fun, I enjoy when things like that happen I'll be honest.

I really enjoyed most of the main characters in this book. It's a group of girls and they were just...excellent. I don't want to say good because...well the title is So Witches We Became, but they were enthralling characters. I wanted to know everything about them and the situations that led them to where they were at this point in the story. I was engaged!

This is definitely a book that I think people should check out if it interests them. On that note, you may want to familiarize yourself with the content warnings for this book before reading.

About Jill Baguchinsky:

Jill Baguchinsky grew up fluent in darkness and Disney. She spent much of her life on a barrier island just off the coast of Southwest Florida, where she read w ay too much Stephen King and dodged more hurricanes than she could count.

Jill’s queer YA horror novel, SO WITCHES WE BECAME, will launch in summer 2024 from Little, Brown and Company. Inspired by Jill’s experience with Hurricane Irma in 2017, SWWB is a st ory about storm surge, female rage, and toxic bro culture. If boys will be boys, girls will fight back.

Jill still lives in Florida, but after one hurricane too many, she and her mini menagerie of rescue animals moved inland. Aside from the manatees she u sed to watch in her backyard canal, she doesn’t miss much about island life.

You can find her on her website, Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads.