The Grimrose Girls (The Grimrose Girls #1) by Laura Pohl

    

Title: The Grimrose Girls

Series: The Grimrose Girls #1

Author: Laura Pohl

Publication date: October 26, 2021

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Pages: 400 (paperback)

Introduction

In this fairytale retelling, teenagers are dying at the prestigious Grimrose Academy, and friends Yuki, Rory, Ella, and newcomer Nani need to get to the bottom of it before whatever is coming for their fellow classmates, comes for them next.

Characters

I liked all the characters, but it times, it felt like their personalities fell a little flat. It felt like while this is not a middle grade novel, that the characters and their personalities were pulled from a middle grade novel and dropped in a young adult storyline. 

Plot

I really enjoyed the plot. Pretty much all fairytale retellings hold a special place in my bookworm heart, and this story isn't an exception. The only gripe that I really had was Nani's original plotline about her father seemed completely forgotten by the second half of the book. A lot of her drive came from wanting to know about what her father had been doing and once that disappeared, it was hard for me to care about her as an individual character rather than just as part of the core group.

Pacing

For the first half of the book, the plot and it's pace was moving very slowly. There were a lot of points where nothing was really going on and those parts were very hard to read passed. The saving grace is that it definitely picks up in the second half, and reading through the slower parts is 100% worth it.

Conclusion

As I said, dark fairytale retellings hold a special place in my heart and that statement includes this book. Overall I really liked the story and I'm looking forward to the future books in the series. 

Teaser Tuesday (21) The Grimrose Girls by Laura Pohl

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by MizB of Should be Reading. Anyone can participate in Teaser Tuesdays. Just do the following:• Grab your read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• Be careful not to include spoilers!
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

For this week's Teaser Tuesday, I'm sharing teasers from The Grimrose Girls by Laura Pohl (The Grimrose Girls #1). I was given an ARC copy for review via Netgalley and I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm currently a little bit more than halfway through.

Goodreads synopsis

The Descendants meets Pretty little liars.

Four troubled friends, One murdered girl... and a dark fate that may leave them all doomed.

After the mysterious death of their best friend, Ella, Yuki, and Rory are the talk of their elite school, Grimrose Académie. The police ruled it a suicide, but the trio are determined to find out what really happened.

When Nani Eszes arrives as their newest roommate, it sets into motion a series of events they couldn't have imagined. As the girls retrace their friend's last steps, they uncover dark secrets about themselves and their destinies, discovering they're all cursed to repeat the brutal and gruesome endings to their stories until they can break the cycle.

This contemporary take on classic fairytales reimagines heroines as friends attending the same school. While investigating the murder of their best friend, they uncover connections to their ancient fairytale curses and attempt to forge their own fate before it's too late.

My teasers

“Death pursues all the girls from the Académie,” Mrs. Vãduva said darkly. “I will not take part in it.”

There was a hanging pause in the air as Mrs. Vãduva looked at the picture. Ella followed her gaze. The one other thing the town talked about other than the witch? The witch’s daughter, the one who’d died.

Page 128.

-

If you're intrigued by the synopsis or my teasers, don't forget to add The Grimrose Girls to your Goodreads TBR and look out for its release, expected November 2, 2021!

First Line Friday (13): The Grimrose Girls by Laura Pohl

First Line Friday is a bookish tag hosted over at Abstract Books that is used to showcase your favourite first lines of books.

There really is something to be said about a good first line, and I'm going to be using this tag from now on to showcase my current read's first lines.

This week for First Line Friday I'm bringing you the first line of The Grimrose Girls:

Goodreads synopsis

The Descendants meets Pretty little liars.

Four troubled friends, One murdered girl... and a dark fate that may leave them all doomed.

After the mysterious death of their best friend, Ella, Yuki, and Rory are the talk of their elite school, Grimrose Académie. The police ruled it a suicide, but the trio are determined to find out what really happened.

When Nani Eszes arrives as their newest roommate, it sets into motion a series of events they couldn't have imagined. As the girls retrace their friend's last steps, they uncover dark secrets about themselves and their destinies, discovering they're all cursed to repeat the brutal and gruesome endings to their stories until they can break the cycle.

This contemporary take on classic fairytales reimagines heroines as friends attending the same school. While investigating the murder of their best friend, they uncover connections to their ancient fairytale curses and attempt to forge their own fate before it's too late.

- 

"The first day of school started with a funeral.

This was not, of course, the usual for the Grimrose Académie for Elite Students, whose student body mostly lived to their eighties, and went on to command corporate conglomerates or win Academy Awards, Nobel Prizes, and other such trifles."

-

If this first line has captured your attention, you can add The Grimrose Girls to your Goodreads TBR here and watch for its release, expected on November 2, 2021!

Stacking the Shelves (8)

Stacking The Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews. It's all about sharing books you've added to your shelves be it physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in a physical store, or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts, and of course ebooks.

I'm back with another Stacking The Shelves. in last week's Stacking the Shelves post I mentioned that I usually only post these when I add more than two books, but recently this blog has been helping me keep my mind off things that are making me anxious, so I wanted to share my shelves with you this week too, even though I only added two books to them.

This week I added:

Goodreads

Goodreads

I actually managed to finish all five books that I posted about in last week's Stacking the Shelves post, so I have already been able to jump in to Friday the Sixteenth. I'm about a 20% of the way through right now, and once I finish, the review will be up as soon as possible.

I haven't started reading The Grimrose Girls yet but I am so excited to. I'm definitely going to be cracking that one open as soon as possible. Both of these books are ARCs from Netgalley and I am so excited to share my thoughts on them. 

Happy reading everybody :)