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A review by melcanread
They Drown Our Daughters by Katrina Monroe
dark
emotional
slow-paced
4.0
Well... that was intense.
They Drown Our Daughters follows the lives of Meredith Strand and all of her maternal ancestors of five generations. After a historical tragedy that left the family "cursed", Meredith seeks to discover the truth and right the wrongs of a hundred years ago, and put an end to the haunting at Cape Disappointment.
Starting off with a personal confession, but I promise you it holds relevance, I'm normally a tough nut to crack when it comes to horror books and ghost stories. Growing up in haunted houses myself, ghosts don't particularly scare me, nor do the stories about them. However, I made sure I had my back to the wall when I read this book and even kept looking over my shoulder while I read it at work. (Yes, I was that hooked that once I started it, I couldn't put it down... even reading it during my breaks between classes.)
I think my main criticism of this story has to be that there were too many characters, especially when Tempest and Calamity came onto the scene. Perhaps this is just a "me problem", but I just found it difficult to keep up, and kept forgetting which one was which. And especially when the story kept jumping from matriarch to matriarch, and other characters and networks were introduced, I had to keep flipping back and reminding myself who was who and where they came from and whatnot. Though I will say, the family tree at the end of the book was both a nice touch and a great help.
I also didn't like how the reason Regina was still alive was never fully explained. This elderly woman, as mobile and robust as she ended up being, was at the ripe old age of at least 100 and yet she was still spritely and... alive? When this was addressed in the books, we were told that there were theories but never any concrete answers. And that made it feel a little forced and lazy. Like, "I want Regina to live, but I don't want to explain why so here's a half-assed explanation for you to be on your way." Kind of thing. It was a fantastic plot twist, and at no point did I ever see it coming. I thought, perhaps, maybe Gina was Cassie and not Regina... but it would have been nice for there to have been some kind of explanation rather than a brush off of, "oh there are theories" and then nothing else explained.
Also, a few of the characters were flawed which was great for giving the book a sense of realism, of course, but for some of these characters we needed extra explanations as to why they chose the paths they chose. Why they clung on to certain others as much as they did, because a few of the characters felt two-dimensional, while others were clearly sculpted and fleshed out.
But as I mentioned, this book had me hooked from start to finish. And at no point was it ever predictable. I got about 70% into it and decided that me trying to figure it out ahead of time, like one often does when the plot is described as "mysterious". Because every single theory I had was wrong. I definitely didn't expect the ending, nor was I left particularly unsatisfied.
Though I mildly criticised it before, I loved how we got to jump around the timeline of the five generations, and how we were able to see how the curse affected each of the women differently. I also really liked how each of the generations gave birth in similar fashions (i.e. they always had at least one daughter and one son), and how this tradition broke with Judith and Meredith because they were the only daughters to challenge what was, and break the cycle. And then eventually when you see Alice and her family, the pattern has been completely shattered.
I also loved how normalised and accepted Meredith's sexuality was, though I was a little shocked to discover the older generation was as accepting of it given history's track record.
Overall, this was a thoroughly enjoyable read, and it's the first book in a long time to get me hooked and actually obsessed with it for the 10 hours it took to get through it. If you love wlw representing main characters and horror stories, this book is definitely for you.
They Drown Our Daughters follows the lives of Meredith Strand and all of her maternal ancestors of five generations. After a historical tragedy that left the family "cursed", Meredith seeks to discover the truth and right the wrongs of a hundred years ago, and put an end to the haunting at Cape Disappointment.
Starting off with a personal confession, but I promise you it holds relevance, I'm normally a tough nut to crack when it comes to horror books and ghost stories. Growing up in haunted houses myself, ghosts don't particularly scare me, nor do the stories about them. However, I made sure I had my back to the wall when I read this book and even kept looking over my shoulder while I read it at work. (Yes, I was that hooked that once I started it, I couldn't put it down... even reading it during my breaks between classes.)
I think my main criticism of this story has to be that there were too many characters, especially when Tempest and Calamity came onto the scene. Perhaps this is just a "me problem", but I just found it difficult to keep up, and kept forgetting which one was which. And especially when the story kept jumping from matriarch to matriarch, and other characters and networks were introduced, I had to keep flipping back and reminding myself who was who and where they came from and whatnot. Though I will say, the family tree at the end of the book was both a nice touch and a great help.
Also, a few of the characters were flawed which was great for giving the book a sense of realism, of course, but for some of these characters we needed extra explanations as to why they chose the paths they chose. Why they clung on to certain others as much as they did, because a few of the characters felt two-dimensional, while others were clearly sculpted and fleshed out.
But as I mentioned, this book had me hooked from start to finish. And at no point was it ever predictable. I got about 70% into it and decided that me trying to figure it out ahead of time, like one often does when the plot is described as "mysterious". Because every single theory I had was wrong. I definitely didn't expect the ending, nor was I left particularly unsatisfied.
Though I mildly criticised it before, I loved how we got to jump around the timeline of the five generations, and how we were able to see how the curse affected each of the women differently. I also really liked how each of the generations gave birth in similar fashions (i.e. they always had at least one daughter and one son), and how this tradition broke with Judith and Meredith because they were the only daughters to challenge what was, and break the cycle. And then eventually when you see Alice and her family, the pattern has been completely shattered.
I also loved how normalised and accepted Meredith's sexuality was, though I was a little shocked to discover the older generation was as accepting of it given history's track record.
Overall, this was a thoroughly enjoyable read, and it's the first book in a long time to get me hooked and actually obsessed with it for the 10 hours it took to get through it. If you love wlw representing main characters and horror stories, this book is definitely for you.