i have like 30 pages left of the gospel according to jesus christ so im hoping to finish it today at some point :thumbs: yes these are all botm choices i've made this year i need to read still i want to get through at least two of them before the end of the year

ink blood sister scribe

vampires of el norte

queen of thieves

lady tan's circle of women

small angels

Nobody knew how old Mockbeggar was, or how big. The outside had been mapped and measured, but once you were in there it seemed to stretch much farther—fern and nettle, oak and beech, green on green for miles. Some nights, it was said, you might find yourself walking amongst trees that had fallen centuries before.

Small Angels, Lauren Owen

Currently reading Small Angels by Lauren Owen, and it’s creeping me out. Folk horror about a family curse, a haunted forest, and the villagers who live in denial about it. I loved Owen’s previous novel, The Quick.

Mockbeggar Woods confirmed as a messy bitch who lives for drama

Small Angels by Lauren Owen

Small Angels by Lauren Owen

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5

Summary: 💔💘🤯🕵🏻‍♀️☠

SPOILERS

It was pretty slow to start, but the last 100-150 pages were so interesting and captivating! I wish the beginning was more interesting. I’m sure a lot of people gave up on this book because of that, and it is quite long.

I enjoyed the different perspectives throughout the story, and how the full mystery of Harry isn’t explained right away.

The whole thing about a wedding is odd, but I guess it makes sense why they are back in Sam’s hometown. 

The woods of Mockbeggar are magical but can be dangerous if you aren’t careful...

This story has love, sisterhood, haunting, wedding, death, lgbtq+, and so much more.

I do recommend this story, because it is an interesting plot and mystery, and it’s worth getting through the beginning.

Small Angels by Lauren Owen - Blog Tour Review!

Today on my blog I'm taking part in the #BlogTour for #SmallAngels by Lauren Owen. A gothic and creepy tale that had me gripped from the first page. Thanks to @TinderPress & @crudites_ for the review copy. #BookReview

As a teenager, Kate found a safe harbour from her parents’ constant fighting in the company of the four Gonne sisters, who lived with their strict grandparents next to Small Angels, a church on the edge of dense green woods. The first outsider to ever get close to the sisters, Kate eventually learned the family’s secret: The woods are home to a capricious, menacing ghost whom generations of…

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Review: Small Angels by Lauren Owen

Review: Small Angels by Lauren Owen

Author: Lauren OwenPublisher: Random HouseReleased: August 2, 2022Received: Own (BOTM) Small Angels was one of BOTM‘s August choices immediately caught my attention. They haven’t had a ton of horror novels lately, yet this month seemed full of them! You can imagine my delight there. Anyway, Small Angels was one of those options, promising horror, gothic fairytale vibes, and LGBT characters. Yes,…

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Historical Habits

#BOOKREVIEW - Historical Habits - #SmallAngels #blog

A small village with a long, and sometimes dark, history related to the surrounding woods is awash with new activity and the woods begin to stir back to life in disturbing ways in Small Angels by Lauren Owen. When Chloe booked the church, Small Angels, for her upcoming wedding she was unaware of the sad history behind it that the people of the village, including her fiancé Sam who grew up there,…

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I saw on tumblr this meme with Chaggie and I had to do this. Guess Kitty got drunk again ;33

Title: Small Angels | Author: Lauren Owen | Publisher: Tinder Press (2022)

"When the trees listened, a story lived - it became vivid, it took possession."

This week's book in my quest to read more is Small Angels, by Lauren Owen. It's about family secrets and generational trauma and how healing is a conscious decision that you have to make for yourself.

It's also about two girls who fall in love in a magical forest.

it's also about the power of storytelling and how the story you tell yourself holds power.

I wanted to tear through this book and find out what was happening, but I also wanted to slow down, savor it. I was only a few chapters in when I knew - it's one of those books that gets under your skin and never leaves. A bit like Mockbeggar itself, I suppose.

[Image ID: the front cover of Small Angels by Lauren Owen, with trees framing a church bell and the tag line "the woods are stirring again..."]

ink blood sister scribe

vampires of el norte

lady tan's circle of women

small angels

kaikeyi

You’d go softly through the dreaming village and the moon-shadowed fields, up the hill to Mockbeggar Woods.

Small Angels, Lauren Owen

55. Small Angels, by Lauren Owen

Owned: No, library Page count: 463 My summary: Chloe’s wedding is going to be perfect. Just her and her man (and their families, of course) in a quaint little church nestled in the woods by the village where he grew up. But there’s strange things afoot in the church of Small Angels. The villagers don’t talk about it, mutter grim tidings. Her fiancé is evasive about what he knows. And Mockbeggar Woods whispers in the night. Something is stirring, something once-buried. And it’s coming for her... My rating: 3.5/5 My commentary:

This one, I picked up entirely on a whim. I love a ghost story, and the title and premise of this book were intriguing enough to me that I felt I should check it out. While in general I'm not so much a fan of works set in contemporary reality (ghosts notwithstanding), I will always make exceptions if there are some other personal draws, such as genres that I like or elements I otherwise enjoy in fiction. This was...perfectly fine for what it is, but I don't expect that I'll remember much about it in a month's time. That kind of book, you know?

The point of view switches between a few characters. We have Chloe, the young bride who hired Small Angels, Kate, her sister-in-law with her own connection to the woods and their more recent history, and Lucia, a traumatised young woman who knows offhand just how dangerous the Mockbeggar woods can be. Their differing knowledge about the situation makes for some intrigue - Chloe is an outsider, Kate grew up here but has significant blocks in her memory, and Lucia is the most clued-in to what's happening in Mockbeggar past and present. Each character brings their own personal perspective. Chloe's almost aware of her Final Girl-type status, Kate is furiously trying to work things out and cling onto her relationship with Lucia (yay, another book with surprise lesbians!), and Lucia is trying her best to make up for past mistakes. Despite being three characters very similar in demographics to one another, I never felt that their perspectives were too samey, which is always a plus.

One thing I really dug about this book was its emphasis on the storytelling tradition. The girls go out and tell tales to the trees, both fictional stories of their own imagining and the real story of the ghost their family wronged. The emphasis is on changing the story, as Lucia Gonne wishes to change the tragic story her family has been caught up in rather than just rehashing and reliving it over and over again to no change. Rather than being prisoners of the past, Lucia wants to help Harry's ghost as best she can. I like the idea of changing the story, of fashioning a new ending for yourself amidst the trauma of the past and letting go a pain that your family have been holding for generations. I do wish we'd seen more of Mockbeggar in all this, though. The idea that the woods are feeding on stories to the point where they manifest elements of those stories is really cool and interesting, and I wish that the novel had explored that a bit more outside of Harry's particular haunting.

The prose here was somewhat purple in hue - I personally have a high tolerance for overly florid language (er, obviously) but I'll admit it's of the sort that might turn someone off if they prefer things to be a little more straightforward. The pace, too, was slow. Not so slow that I got bored reading, but it seemed to take a long time for the plot to meander to its next point, and I can imagine how that might be frustrating for someone who doesn't read as ridiculously fast as I do. On the whole I didn't think it was badly paced, it just could have used a bit of tightening here and there.

Next up, a woman attempts to escape slavery.

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How many angels can dance on an old gramophone?

Just the two of them

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