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amaranth_wytch's review
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, and Gaslighting
Moderate: Biphobia, Misogyny, and Blood
Minor: Alcohol
frispbabe's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Gaslighting
Minor: Violence and Blood
megandherbook's review
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
A spin on the Headless Horseman legend - in the modern world.
Kat van Tassel is the direct descendent of Katrina van Tassel and has lived with the responsibility of carrying the name her whole life. As the 200th anniversary of the Headless Horseman haunting approaches Kat wants nothing more than to be kept out of the whole superstitious town and their celebration. She’s feeling more and more confined by the pressure of continuing her family legacy, marrying her long time boyfriend, and managing the family estate. When Isadora moves to town Kat starts to see a world where she leaves Sleepy Hollow and has a life outside of the confines of her legacy. With her family fearing this they give her Katrina’s diary so Kat can see just how real the legend is. As Kat learns more about her ancestor and namesake she learns that she may not be so different from her.
I really enjoyed this book. I love any book that has spooky undertones (or overtones) and this book set in the town of Sleepy Hollow has just that. The legend of the Headless Horseman is so engrained in the town and it’s people that a lot of the curriculum in the high school centers on it.
Getting to read from the perspective of both Kat and Katrina made me connect with both of them - they are both so much alike and I loved seeing Kat learn more about herself from Katrina’s experiences. Then, the tie in of the legend was perfect.
I’m familiar with the legend of Sleepy Hollow (as I believe most are) but I haven’t read the book. This book made me bump up that book on my reading list so I can see, first had, what allowed this book to be created so many years later. Highly recommend!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Toxic relationship, and Gaslighting
Moderate: Bullying and Blood
Minor: Homophobia and Lesbophobia
kaiyakaiyo's review
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.5
This book was … not good. It bit off far more than it could chew, trying to tackle coming out, abusive teen relationships, and a supernatural plot all at once. Nearly none of it was handled well because it was all half-baked in an attempt to fit it all in.
Part of me thinks “be generous, this book is for younger readers” but that’s actually why I think it’s incredibly naive and a terrible example. This book sets Blake & Brom up from the beginning as similar characters: childhood friends that feel entitled to the “girl of their dreams”, gaslighting, insulting, and trapping her in the life they want. Then magically Brom is actually a “really nice guy” solely because an even worse guy came along. Terrible example for kids/teens reading this, literal years of Katrina feeling insulted & stifled just for it to magically be okay with settling because Brom said nice things and wasn’t as awful as the Worse Love Interest… okay.
Katrina stays in the place she said for years she didn’t want to stay in because suddenly her town is more important than her dreams… it’s the same shitty “family & home in a small town matter more than success :) ” garbage you see in Sweet Home Alabama & lifetime Christmas movies. The story tries to explain it away as “Katrina being happy she has a choice at all” (which is super fucked up) but ultimately it’s just her caving to her family’s intense brainwashing that she alone can prop up this community & town economy. What the fuck.
Her descendants are then similarly brainwashed into the same thinking, to the point of all being named Katrina & being forced to find farmer husbands. The author heavily implies that this was the happy, desired outcome for OG Katrina… In what world? Pages & pages dedicated to how suffocating her home life was just for her to inflict it on her own kids… Condemning dozens of girls to the fate she hated… absolute dumpster fire of a moral. The modern day half of the plot happily fading to black doesn’t make up for the horrendous other half. I truly think this author didn’t realize how badly they’d lost track of what they were trying to convey. Is this a “follow your dreams” story? Is this a “give up your dreams for family” story? It’s incredibly muddy for a book people are potentially handing to young women.
Next is the frankly terrible supernatural subplot. This reads like the worst “Harry Potter characters reading the books” fanfic from back in the day. Bad diary entries and Ghosts and spooky breezes and little to no detail on how any of the magic in this universe works. Just random occurrences and freaky parallels and hand waving. Kat reads Katrina’s diary and it’s literally the exact same story just with super bad historical accuracy. I get that you had to make the time period less oppressive for kid readers but my god is it bad. It’s like when people try to write a book set in London but all of the slang and descriptions sound like an American city. An attempt was made. Also the diary was incredibly patchy, and the tense used… bad
The queer part of this book is actually the least reproachable; it’s sweet, everything is beautiful and nothing hurts, even the vague hate crime/bullying incident is mentioned but not seen. It’s the sort of unrealistic I can accept bc I think queer audiences deserve happy stories. That being said, having the MC jump straight into said cute relationship after literal years of emotional abuse is… a choice. Why not save that for the epilogue or something…
All in all I think this is a shitty attempt at modernizing what is usually a fascinating story: it fails to make use of the HEADLESS man on a DEMON horse or any of the interesting lore, it falls flat in nearly every lesson it set out to teach, and is in turns pedantic and lazy. “Being gay is cool, following your dreams? Eh, Depends on how much the community needs your labor”
I’m all for authors trying things, especially queer ones but this… coulda stayed in the drafts. I don’t even want to donate it because I don’t want to be complicit in peddling this drivel
Part of me thinks “be generous, this book is for younger readers” but that’s actually why I think it’s incredibly naive and a terrible example. This book sets Blake & Brom up from the beginning as similar characters: childhood friends that feel entitled to the “girl of their dreams”, gaslighting, insulting, and trapping her in the life they want. Then magically Brom is actually a “really nice guy” solely because an even worse guy came along. Terrible example for kids/teens reading this, literal years of Katrina feeling insulted & stifled just for it to magically be okay with settling because Brom said nice things and wasn’t as awful as the Worse Love Interest… okay.
Katrina stays in the place she said for years she didn’t want to stay in because suddenly her town is more important than her dreams… it’s the same shitty “family & home in a small town matter more than success :) ” garbage you see in Sweet Home Alabama & lifetime Christmas movies. The story tries to explain it away as “Katrina being happy she has a choice at all” (which is super fucked up) but ultimately it’s just her caving to her family’s intense brainwashing that she alone can prop up this community & town economy. What the fuck.
Her descendants are then similarly brainwashed into the same thinking, to the point of all being named Katrina & being forced to find farmer husbands. The author heavily implies that this was the happy, desired outcome for OG Katrina… In what world? Pages & pages dedicated to how suffocating her home life was just for her to inflict it on her own kids… Condemning dozens of girls to the fate she hated… absolute dumpster fire of a moral. The modern day half of the plot happily fading to black doesn’t make up for the horrendous other half. I truly think this author didn’t realize how badly they’d lost track of what they were trying to convey. Is this a “follow your dreams” story? Is this a “give up your dreams for family” story? It’s incredibly muddy for a book people are potentially handing to young women.
Next is the frankly terrible supernatural subplot. This reads like the worst “Harry Potter characters reading the books” fanfic from back in the day. Bad diary entries and Ghosts and spooky breezes and little to no detail on how any of the magic in this universe works. Just random occurrences and freaky parallels and hand waving. Kat reads Katrina’s diary and it’s literally the exact same story just with super bad historical accuracy. I get that you had to make the time period less oppressive for kid readers but my god is it bad. It’s like when people try to write a book set in London but all of the slang and descriptions sound like an American city. An attempt was made. Also the diary was incredibly patchy, and the tense used… bad
The queer part of this book is actually the least reproachable; it’s sweet, everything is beautiful and nothing hurts, even the vague hate crime/bullying incident is mentioned but not seen. It’s the sort of unrealistic I can accept bc I think queer audiences deserve happy stories. That being said, having the MC jump straight into said cute relationship after literal years of emotional abuse is… a choice. Why not save that for the epilogue or something…
All in all I think this is a shitty attempt at modernizing what is usually a fascinating story: it fails to make use of the HEADLESS man on a DEMON horse or any of the interesting lore, it falls flat in nearly every lesson it set out to teach, and is in turns pedantic and lazy. “Being gay is cool, following your dreams? Eh, Depends on how much the community needs your labor”
I’m all for authors trying things, especially queer ones but this… coulda stayed in the drafts. I don’t even want to donate it because I don’t want to be complicit in peddling this drivel
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny and Blood
Moderate: Homophobia
shannasbooksnhooks's review
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
"Not much happened in Sleepy Hollow, and news like this was not the sort of thing you forgot to tell your wife."
This book was not what I was expecting from it, and not in a happy way. I don't know if I can honestly say that I was "disappointed" in this read, because it did have some unique takes and additions to Disney's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" animated short. (It's usually attached to Disney's "Wind in the Willows" animated short as The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.) But overall, Raising the Horseman was just a "meh" book for me. The past and the present mirrored each other a little too much for my liking. And most of it was relatively predictable (except for the very end, and which felt a little rushed). I wouldn't recommend this book, mainly due to my love of the Disney short and how this book didn't really live up to the short's magic.
This book was not what I was expecting from it, and not in a happy way. I don't know if I can honestly say that I was "disappointed" in this read, because it did have some unique takes and additions to Disney's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" animated short. (It's usually attached to Disney's "Wind in the Willows" animated short as The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.) But overall, Raising the Horseman was just a "meh" book for me. The past and the present mirrored each other a little too much for my liking. And most of it was relatively predictable (except for the very end, and which felt a little rushed). I wouldn't recommend this book, mainly due to my love of the Disney short and how this book didn't really live up to the short's magic.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Toxic relationship, Blood, Lesbophobia, and Outing
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