♡ Tkay!'s Reviews > Grave Matter

4.5/5! 🌟🌟🌟🌟.5

🍄‍🟫 Ooooohkay, that was quite the wild ride. This started off slow for me, but absolutely finished with me having my jaw on the floor.

🍄‍🟫 A psychological horror/thriller with Gothic vibes, romance, sci-fi AND spice? Count me in. A book with crazy science experiments, fungi puns, ghosts and dark forests that come to life? Yes please. This book definitely drew me in immediately, especially with that gorgeous cover.

⁺˚⋆｡°🍄₊ Sydney, a promising mycologist, feels like she has nothing left. Her family is gone, her scholarship lost, and now all she wants is to find a cure for the one thing that took her grandmother from her: Alzheimer's. She has been offered an internship at the Madrona Foundation, a research facility on a remote Vancouver Island, where she can study the fungi that might contribute to the cause she holds so near and dear. When she gets there, however, things start to seem sideways, and not all what she signed up for. 🍄💀

⁺˚⋆｡°🍄₊ I really enjoyed so much of this, and thought it was pretty balanced in terms of the romance, spice, plot, science and horror aspects. There was just enough spice to not overthrow the plot. I cannot stand when a book is just spice and no plot, and this did the trick for me. However, the spice we did get was spicing and absolutely perfect.🔥

⁺˚⋆｡°🍄₊ The characters were all pretty solid. The ones I was supposed to dislike, I definitely disliked. Our FMC definitely fit the bill, but I wanted to shake her a million times and say "trust your instinct". Our love interest and MMC was not at all what I thought, and it was a nice surprise at the end. Munawar and his fungi pun shirts were my favorite, though. If you find no reason to want to read this, give this man and his collection of fungi related attire a chance.

⁺˚⋆｡°🍄₊ Overall, I really enjoyed Karina Halle's writing. She did a beautiful job of giving us a little bit of everything, and I certainly did not see the plot twists coming. I have so many of her books of my TBR and this made me want to dive in and see what else I'm missing out on. If you are looking for another quick, haunting read to finish spooky season off, let it be this!

🍄‍🟫 Thank you to NetGalley, and Metal Blonde Books for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review! 🍄‍🟫