THE CROWS is one of about five books I've read this year that I can seriously say I've enjoyed. With many readers choosing and PREFERRING mindless, lifeless swill, and many authors following them because that's what sells, this book was a breath of fresh air, clearly written by someone who actually cared about the world, characters, and craft of creative storytelling.

The writing style in this is absolutely lovely, with a strong style, equally strong vocabulary, and realistic dialogue. I could tell from the sample alone this was going to have prose I would respect, and I'm thrilled to say, having finished the book, that it remained strong right through to the end. The style is easy to get absorbed into with just enough imagery to make scenes vivid, while the dialogue really brings most of the characters to life!

Unfortunately, I will say that for the majority of the book the main character, Carrie, felt like she was merely along for the ride as a "normal person" in a place with a lot of strange people. This could have worked better had she had her own secret strangeness, OR, the inverse (as my buddy reader suggested), if she had been SO normal and bland as to be humorous. Instead, she was banal with toned-down reactions that made it appear as if she was really just there merely to be carried along the stream of weirdness and to experience it for the sake of us, the reader. That being said, she had some qualities that I liked, such as the way she embraced the peculiarity of her home and accepted her dark, awkward, and scary neighbor, in contrast to the rest of the town which tended to fear and shun him. She had empathy, and I liked these characteristics from her!

The rest of the characters all had PLENTY of eccentricity and personality, especially the aforementioned neighbor, Ricky, who was almost the secondary main character and definitely my favorite character in the book! While, yes, he was a bit monstrous and kind of a little freak as expected at first (and second) impression, he had LAYERS. He had FEELINGS. He didn't fully understand even his own motivations at times because he didn't expect to feel the way he felt about things, and that made him, ironically, very human. He was a dark hero, a bit of an anti-hero, but unavoidably likable. Honestly, my favorite characters ARE the little freaks with feelings, and he both fit the bill and became his own unique spin of that. I really liked him, and he will be the character that stands out most in my memory.

By the end of this book, I still wasn't quite sure what the "plot" was meant to be, aside from the main character "acclimatising" (to quote the book) to her haunted home, the town, and its strange residents. I think the history of one of her home's ghosts, and the dark death that ghost experienced, kind of pushed itself into the forefront of "plot" towards the middle end of the book, and, granted, that story was threaded and teased from the beginning. But whatever was there felt disjointed. I understand some things were intentionally vague and intentionally made to make the reader think, which, don't get me wrong, I DO VERY MUCH LIKE, but I admit I wish there had been a LITTLE more there, a little more cohesion with that plot, and a little more flow for it. Still, I was never sorry to be reading this book, I was INVESTED the whole time, and I never quite knew what would happen next. I thoroughly enjoyed discovering this town and its characters, whether the plot was abstract or not.

I also must make a further point that I really do like that this book was written with intelligence and expectant of some level of acumen from its readers. The way that punctuation, particularly italics and parentheses, were used was REALLY interesting. I honestly kind of want to read the book again sometime just to better understand all the nuance of the author's choices in these punctuations better.

At the end of the day, this was a truly worthwhile read that was a lot of fun. I read it in August, but it'd honestly be PERFECT for spooky month! If you like horror books with heart that don't often follow standard tropes and that actually make you use your brain JUST A LITTLE BIT, I would absolutely recommend this. Rosens is an author I've had on my radar for a long time, and I'm glad I finally took the plunge. I'll definitely be reading more books by her and hopefully soon.