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A review by counterfeitchocolatecoin
A Hawk in the Woods by Carrie Laben
4.0
The novel’s plot in a nutshell: twin sisters Abihail (not a typo) and Martha come from a family of what I would describe as Lovecraftian necromancers. One sister has the ability to psychically “push” people’s brains, influencing them to do her whim, and the other can fold time to go forward or back or make it pass faster or more slowly. In the present, the two sisters make their way to their family cabin for reasons you’ll find out over the course of the book that involve one sister’s terminal cancer and a spell I’m not going to ruin for you. Each chapter also unfolds some of the story of their childhood, where we learn about their abusive grandfather and mother, both of whom liked to take over Martha’s body (they perceived her as the weaker sister) and do what they wished with it. It’s a truly chilling representation of abuse, especially when you find out why Martha starts the novel in prison for murder.
The sisters’ dynamic is realistically frustrating (I especially like Abby’s utterly realistic annoyance at Martha’s nervous twitch of folding time forward when she’s anxious) and the plot moves along quickly. I also like the way the book uses social media; Abby psychically feeds off the attention she receives on Twitter.
Sometimes the jump between the past and the present felt like it was drawing things out more than it had to (you don’t find out why Martha was in prison until almost the end of the book, for example), but for the most part that structure worked well to tell two separate but related stories simultaneously.
The sisters’ dynamic is realistically frustrating (I especially like Abby’s utterly realistic annoyance at Martha’s nervous twitch of folding time forward when she’s anxious) and the plot moves along quickly. I also like the way the book uses social media; Abby psychically feeds off the attention she receives on Twitter.
Sometimes the jump between the past and the present felt like it was drawing things out more than it had to (you don’t find out why Martha was in prison until almost the end of the book, for example), but for the most part that structure worked well to tell two separate but related stories simultaneously.