The Luminaries

Another book I received from NetGalley at the end of last year, thinking I’d dip my toe back into Teen/YA once more.

This sees us following a secret society protecting the world from forest spirits nightmares! This intrigued me from the start and I was pulled into the world immediately.

It is also a wonderful invention that explains all the worlds different mythical creatures and why they appear at night, with each regions spirit developing their own nightmares as they grow older but all starting out with the same basic ones.

Each night sees a different branch of the family go into the forest to hunt the nightmares, one for each night and they are named after the night they hunt on, our main character is Winnie Wednesday, but she doesn’t hunt as her family are outcasts.

The story is a fast-paced and thrilling adventure with so many twists and turn going on that it is sometimes hard to follow, I’m sure there are plenty of red herrings peppering the story as I’m thinking a couple of things about possible directions for the story to go in the next books, but I bet some of those are false trails.

We have some of the usual tropes, outsider protagonist, broody handsome boy, popular beautiful girl. All used to be friends but were forced apart… this is done well though and is really lending to the feel of possibilities and false trails.

Overall a great two day read, absolutely loved the cover, watch out for ghost-deer in your travels and hope that book 2 comes sometime quickly.