A review by clovetra
Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder

adventurous dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

was i on drugs reading this? did i slip into an alternate dimension halfway through this book? am i alive? what in the ever loving fuck?
the blurb of this book does not clue the reader in to what fresh hell they are about to read. oh my god. i thought i was about to get something like severance and instead i got…. man i don’t even know what the fuck i got. what the fuck.
that’s all that’s going through my head — what. the. fuck.
i think its best if i break this review down into the three parts of the story, because honestly i have different views on all of them. although i will say OOOO i love when books have different POVs where all the characters eventually line up at one point in the story. like they meet each other at the midway point of the novel. i love it.
anyways, onto the first part with erin. easily the best part of the book. which makes sense because i believe snyder workshopped this for ages to the point where it was its own standalone. it was so good. i enjoyed erin’s characterisation, the plot, where it was going, the worldbuilding, everything. once the horror elements came in i was READDYYYY. i was loving it!!!!! esp the scenes with betty WHOOO didn’t expect that at all! ummm and then i think the author took crazy pills for the last chapter because then i was so fucking lost. hey what in the hell just happened? why is my pandemic book now turning into… god i can’t even describe what. i kinda felt like the ending ruined the perfection of erin’s story. like seriously what in the ever loving fuck happened. sure i know NOW what ended up happening but…. Cmon.
savannah’s story. Huh. i like how there was a link to erin’s story, although not directly, but the way savannah ties into this whole story….. yeah it’s a miss. some dialogue choices very much felt like i was reading the world’s worst booktok novel. like im sorry why is she talking about her father’s jizz after murder. at some point it felt like in savannah’s story, snyder decided to just write whatever fucked up thing popped in their head, and went with it without thinking if it would fit tonally or even make sense! like from here we went WAYYY beyond sci-fi and dystopias into god knows what. and i have to talk about that entire page where savannah sounds incredibly stilted after killing a black woman…. a direct quote from savannah is literally “that’s why i killed a strong, accomplished black woman who was pretty much the embodiment of the american dream”. that is the most hamfisted line i think i have had the displeasure of reading. savannah was a funny protagonist at times, but im so serious if it was her story alone this book would be a 2-star rating if only for the lols.
and the third part…….. it wasn’t even horrifically bad like savannah’s part, but it was just…. Meh. at this point i fully felt like i was taking every single hallucinogen known to man whilst reading this. mareva was pretty much a blank slate character, making her incredibly boring. coupled with the fact now suddenly there are aliens and shit, and time travel????? like what in the ever loving fuck is going on. at this point i was just waiting for the book to end. i do think the horror here was pretty good, defo better than what was in savannah’s part, but like i said, nothing came close to erin’s part. 
this book is so fucking wild. so odd. you really have to suspend your disbelief to have a good time with this one. erin’s part did prime me for the horrors of part 2&3, but  honestly parts 2&3 felt like they were apart of their own book away from part 1. overall, the writing was fun, vibrant and sardonic, although at some points it felt like the characters would almost break the fourth wall to then preach about something completely irrelevant. plus all the mentions of the covid-19 pandemic kept throwing me for a loop, as this book kept feeling like it was in an alternate dimension, yet it kept reminding me it is almost contemporary in its time period. 
this was weird. but i’d say i had a good time.
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