Format: Audio 

I did go into this with a few ideas of how I expected it to be having read some of Lindsey Kelk’s contemporary books. I was anticipating a book that flowed smoothly and was easy to keep track of and follow. And this is exactly what I got. 

The writing did a great job of drawing me in. I was invested in Emily’s story from the start and found myself trying to solve the various mysteries she encountered alongside her. This is the type of book that works perfectly as an audiobook for me – a smooth listen that I can connect to even while doing other things (in this case largely grooming and exercising the pony) – and that’s thanks to the author’s accessible and engrossing writing style. 

That being said I did have a few issues that took me out of the story and were a bit jarring, largely due to modern slang and references being incorporated into the story. I know this shouldn’t have surprised me – it is very clear it’s set in the here and now but hearing the word ‘unalive’ in a book is not something I expected. I am not the target age range for a YA book, so I don’t use terminology like this anyway but personal preference: I have no desire to see this in a book again. I do wonder if it was particularly jarring because this does stray into the fantasy realm – perhaps it might have been less jarring in a contemporary book without fantasy elements? But regardless, it wasn’t for me. There was also a reference to SpongeBob and while I (now) know this is still ongoing, because I watched this as a child, it again took me out of the story as (in complete contrast to the unalived issue) I then thought maybe it was set several years earlier than it actually is. So definitely some confusion and jarring moments with these but this is purely personal preference. 

I’ve seen a few critiques of the relationship between Emily and Wyn and how it felt instalovey. I would agree that it developed very quickly but I do think this was needed for the story – it’s actually quite a short amount of time that passes within the story and so we need this relationship to fit with that. And actually outside of the this, I thought the pacing worked really well. Again, this is largely testament to the author’s writing style and this was particularly clear as we built towards the end of the book when the tension increased. I found myself speeding the audiobook up to match the build-up of tension – something I do a lot when reading physically (increasing my reading speed) but haven’t actually found myself doing on audio before. 

Overall, I thought this was a great start to a new series, and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.