For fans of Claire Legrand, Rory Power, and Danielle Vega comes a visceral horror thriller in the vein of Midsommar, as one girl inherits a mysterious house from her estranged grandmother—and a letter with sinister instructions.

Jo never expected to be placed in her absent grandmother’s will—let alone be left her house, her land, and a letter with mysterious demands.

Upon arriving at the inherited property, things are even more strange.

The tenants mentioned in the letter are odd, just slightly…off. Jo feels something dark and decrepit in the old shack behind the house. And the things that her father used to talk about, his delusions… Why is Jo starting to believe they might be real?

But what Jo fears most is the letter from her grandmother. Because if it’s true, then Jo belongs here, in this strange place. And she has no choice but to stay.

With a deadly enemy that cannot be seen, a world that may only be unlocked by a chosen few, and a chilling past that must be unearthed at any cost, The Cherished is an original, hypnotizing contemporary horror—one that will thrill readers of White Smoke, Wilder Girls, and The Hazel Wood.

The premise of this book got me really intrigued and I was excited to pick it up, thinking it was going to be super dark and twisty, but it didn’t quite reach what I was hoping it would. In a lot of books I want to root for or identify with the main character, but in this one it’s hard to do that with the attitude that Jo has most of the book.

I did feel that the book was mysterious and I wanted to see where it was going, but it did seem like a lot of the story was set up in a way. There were also a lot of plot holes that never really god addressed. I almost feel like this was set up with the intent of there being more to the story or further books, but there isn’t.

I wanted to really love this one more than I did, but in the end I was left a little dissatisfied. There were certainly moments where it was fun and I was enjoying it – and I feel with some editing and refinement it could definitely be bumped up higher as the premise was fantastic.

Happy reading!