The Boatman's Daughter is like a fever dream of a fairy tale, set in an Arkansas bayou this story is complete with witches, gods, mutant children, drugs, and violence. The story took a bit to really kick in, the beginning is a lot of character introduction that feels stilted and doesn't flow very well. It's more like reading a drawn out cast sheet for a play. Once the storyline doesn't start up and things smooth out it unfolds as a beautifully crafted mystery, with prose you can really sink your teeth into, but told from such a detached perspective that keeping characters, plot points, and time straight can be challenging.

It is undeniably an incredibly well crafted novel, the story is tight and suspenseful, but really lacks an emotional edge to bring it to life. I think it would be well read as an audio book as it has more of an oral tradition style to the way things unfold. It's definitely one I'll want to give another try it in the future, probably as an audio book to see if that changes things.

If you're interested in a dark, murky fantasy I'd highly recommend.

The Silenced feels like the culmination of Diana Rodriguez Wallach's YA horror career, it perfectly blends the meticulous research of Hatchet Girls with the suspenseful thrills of Small Town Monsters into a book that picks up right from the beginning, and stays at a consistent pace throughout. There weren't really any lulls in plot or atmosphere. Everything felt relevant and real. I struggled with the romance aspects of her previous two books, the felt out of place and derailed the plot, but the relationship between Hazel and Quint feels real while not entirely necessary. They easily could have just been Platonic friends, but I wasn't frustrated with their scenes alone together as I was in previous books. Their story took a solid backseat to the main plot and helped lighten things up and give a depth of reality to an unreal situation without overpowering the sense of urgency at the core of the story.

Diana Rodriguez Wallach has such an astute understanding of horror and suspense that with very few tweaks of dialogue and a little more depth of character, this could easily be sold as an adult horror novel. She is an author who understands her audience and treats them with respect that is hard to find on the YA shelves of horror. She doesn't pull away from the realities of the situations she writes, she just brings them to the cusp of too real, illustrating genuine fear and terror on the page in a digestible manor without relying on jumpscares.

While some of the larger twists were somewhat predictable, the plot was elegant, original, and written with intricate detail so every twist - big or small, predictable or not - felt real and genuinely shocking to not only the characters but the reader.

I would recommend this to anyone looking for a good ghost story of any age. I hope to see more horror from this author for years to come.