"Hemlock Grove" by Brian McGreevy review

Hemlock Grove review

Author: Brian McGreevy

5 out of 5stars

Disclosure: I received an ARC of this book from the Amazon.com Vine program in exchange for an honest review.

Hemlock Grove is filled with interesting characters and facilities. There is the newly-arrived Peter Rumancek, a half-breed gypsy and werewolf. There is Roman Godfrey, scion of the powerful Godfrey family, who formerly owned the metalworks and whom now own the mental health facility. There is his sister, Shelley, a giant who wears boxes full of soil on her feet. There is Dr. Pryce, who runs the biomedical facility – who is either a sociopath or autistic, and who is super-humanly strong. And there is someone – or something – that is horribly killing young girls.

I liked this book just fine, until way toward the end, where – OK, I’ll admit it, I’m going to give you a spoiler, but if you, like I, love cats, you might thank me for it. There is an incident with a cat. And it’s not a happy thing. You have been warned.

Nevertheless, overall, I liked this book, although the writing does tend toward stream-of-consciousness and it is sometimes difficult to understand what is being said. Some of that might have been corrected for the final version, however – since some of the problem was the uncorrected nature of the ARC I was reading. However, the writing is also witty and the cast of quirky characters is wonderful - I would have liked to have seen them a bit better developed in some cases, as they often seemed to be defined by their appearance more than anything, but as the book went on, some of them were developed pretty well. This is listed as being a gothic book, and that is quite true. I laughed a lot, but at the end, there isn’t a lot to laugh about. Not a sad ending, per se, but not a happy one, either. Not a book I would recommend for sensitive readers. However, people who like werewolves should love this book. People who enjoyed Frankenstein will love this book. A lot of people will love this book. Don’t be afraid – go ahead and give it a read. Just be aware that there are moments that are somewhat difficult to bear.