Title: The Accident Season
by Moïra Fowley-Doyle
Date of Publication: August 18th 2015
Genre: Young Adult | Contemporary | Mystery
For fans of We Were Liars and How I Live Now comes a haunting, sexy, magically realistic debut about a family caught between a violent history, a taboo romance, and the mysteries lurking in their own backyard.
Every October Cara and her family become inexplicably and unavoidably accident-prone. Some years it's bad, like the season when her father died, and some years it's just a lot of cuts and scrapes. This accident season—when Cara, her ex-stepbrother, Sam, and her best friend, Bea, are 17—is going to be a bad one. But not for the reasons they think.
Cara is about to learn that not all the scars left by the accident season are physical: There's a long-hidden family secret underneath the bumps and bruises. This is the year Cara will finally fall desperately in love, when she'll start discovering the painful truth about the adults in her life, and when she'll uncover the dark origins of the accident season—whether she's ready or not.
I was enchanted.
“Accidents happen. Our bones shatter, our skin splits, our hearts break. We burn, we drown, we stay alive.”
Okay, let me tell you guys, I have been super excited to get my hands on this book. That title? That blurb? Wow. Those things alone hooked me in already so I requested for it right away and I got sad when they declined me. Last week, though, I got an e-mail from the publisher asking to review this book and of course, I replied with an affirmative!
I already said it but I’m gonna repeat it again: I was enchanted. Why? The narration of this book was one-of-a-kind. I mean, there’s nothing really new or special about it but when reading, I could just tell that it’s different somehow. I liked that difference. I can sense the air of danger from the get-go and it was thrilling. I loved the Irish folklore blended into it because I was not expecting that. But most of all, I just really loved the plot of this book. The story in itself was pretty unique and the way it was told, the sequence of events—they were pretty on point. There was a build-up with the tension and if you have been reading some of my reviews, you will know that I love me some good tension. I really liked how I had goose bumps most of the time while reading this because of unexpected twists and turns. Truly, this book was chilling.
“We’re afraid of the accident season. We’re afraid of how easily accidents turn into tragedies. We have had too many of those already.”
Of course, I liked the characters, too. All of them were so beautifully flawed that I found myself psychoanalyzing them (with what basic knowledge I know about psychoanalysis). Sam, Bea, Alice and Cara were beautiful but broken teenagers. I loved how their feelings, both good and bad, were manifested as other...creatures that look like them yet different somehow. I loved their crazy selves. I loved their relationship with each other and with other secondary characters. I really liked the fact that they didn’t sound like pretentious high schoolers because let’s face it: a lot of YA Contemporary books have pretentious teenage characters. But not these four. They were authentic and they were very candid with their emotions. Their half belief, half skepticism towards the accident season and the actions they took regarding it was fascinating to read. Lastly, they were very seductive (you just have to figure out why I think they are). *winks*
But there is one thing I didn’t like. During the climax of the story, I felt confused. My mind was thrown all over the place because action after action took place without giving me, as a reader, a chance to breathe and digest the story. I guess it really was supposed to be told in a frantic way but, yeah, my mind just kind of jumbled together and I felt like my eyes got crossed or something.
With all of that said, I think it was pretty clear that you should read this book because there’s nothing like it out there. It’s not perfect, but the plot was genius and sharp. Each turn of the page will have you gasping because you didn’t see that twist coming. Aside from that, this book’s about family ties and friendship so strong, not even death can tear it apart.
4/5 Haunting Stars
About the Author:
Moïra spent several years at university studying vampires in young adult fiction before concentrating on writing young adult fiction with no vampires in it whatsoever. She wrote her first novel at the age of eight, when she was told that if she wrote a story about spiders she wouldn't be afraid of them anymore. Moïra is still afraid of spiders, but has never stopped writing stories.
Love,
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