[ARC Review] Grave Matter by Karina Halle
But the Madrona Foundation harbors more than brilliant minds. Everyone around her is hiding a terrible secret—including the resident psychologist she’s falling in love with. A student disappears, and no one but Sydney seems to care. Ghosts walk the halls. Snow falls in the middle of summer. Dead animals move like the living. The more Sydney uncovers about the foundation, the more she begins to question her own sanity. And if Sydney isn’t going mad, then the horrors in the surrounding forest are real, and the Madrona Foundation may be the biggest monster of all.
✨ MY THOUGHTS: I absolutely love an unreliable narrator, and Karina Halle gives readers the ultimate in compromised main characters in Sydney Denik. I was glued to the page from start to finish, and it's psychological thrillers like this that remind me that Halle used to be a screenwriter; Grave Matter could easily play out on the screen with the amount of detail and depth included in every scene.
Between all the unknowns scattered throughout the story, and the gothic vibes that permeate deep much like the very fungi our main character has set out to study, I felt spellbound while devouring this story. Sydney, her fellow students, and the teachers and researchers at the Madrona Foundation were all so well written. Halle not only did a phenomenal job at creating a narrator who knows she can't trust herself, but she also kept so many pieces in play between the other characters and even the setting. The closer I got to the end, the more I was on the edge of my seat as more and more secrets and truths were revealed. The big reveal was one I never saw coming, and I will probably think about it for days to come.
Karina Halle always has such a way with storytelling; from the actions on the page to the descriptions of the trees, it's just so easy to envision everything that was happening. Grave Matter was more science-based than I'm used to reading from Halle, but even with my very limited knowledge of fungi, I had no problem enjoying the story. I do enjoy science fiction, and the fact that this had elements of both psychological thriller and science fiction really made this story stand out.
Between an outstanding cast of characters - many of whom had questionable alliances up until the very end - and a lush and terrifying landscape, Grave Matter is a new favorite book from Karina Halle.
[A huge thank you to Karina Halle/the Reckless Reader's Society for providing a review copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]
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Release date: 10/23/24
Format: eARC
eARC provided via: the author
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