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Author: Susan Dennard
Series: The Luminaries
Series #: 1
Genre: fantasy, horror
Age Group: Young Adult
ARC?: yes

Hemlock Falls isn’t like other towns. You won’t find it on a map, your phone won’t work here, and the forest outside town might just kill you.

Winnie Wednesday wants nothing more than to join the Luminaries, the ancient order that protects Winnie’s town—and the rest of humanity—from the monsters and nightmares that rise in the forest of Hemlock Falls every night.

Ever since her father was exposed as a witch and a traitor, Winnie and her family have been shunned. But on her sixteenth birthday, she can take the deadly Luminary hunter trials and prove herself true and loyal—and restore her family’s good name. Or die trying.

But in order to survive, Winnie enlists the help of the one person who can help her train: Jay Friday, resident bad boy and Winnie’s ex-best friend. While Jay might be the most promising new hunter in Hemlock Falls, he also seems to know more about the nightmares of the forest than he should. Together, he and Winnie will discover a danger lurking in the forest no one in Hemlock Falls is prepared for.

Not all monsters can be slain, and not all nightmares are confined to the dark.

Review

The Luminaries was an excellent book — I enjoyed it. This is very different than her Witchlands series. This book has a feel of horror/mystery with a mixture of paranormal/supernatural elements. It also felt a bit dystopian. Not in a bad way but I would say it had “Supernatural” vibes with the hunters aspect.

Much of the book is exactly the summary of the book, Winnie must pass the hunter trials and redeem her family. There is some mystery thrown in as well, and I enjoyed Winnie as a character. I loved how she and Jay interacted. Darian was pretty cool as well.

(Also want to point out I love that she wears glasses, and it felt so relatable with her constantly pushing them up.)

One thing I will say is that it didn’t have a lot of plot to it, it was pretty much trial, trial, trial, and then end. This definitely is more like a setup for the rest of the series. This isn’t a bad thing at all, because I’m intrigued enough to read the next book.

An aspect that I also enjoyed is that she isn’t super powerful, she doesn’t gain all these amazing skills, in some ways a bit like the anti-chosen one. Which worked very well for this book.

The atmosphere was wonderfully done. This is a book that reads very well for the fall. It kind of sucks you in. Honestly, I kept thinking back to TV shows like Teen Wolf, Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries while reading this. They were all shows I loved, so I also very much enjoyed the book. Just the feeling of them…it felt like that.

The second part I had some trouble with is not necessarily the world building, but how this society actually functioned. I felt that it wasn’t totally fleshed out well enough to be understood. I’m hoping we’ll get more of that in the future, and understand more of what this world is like.

I’m excited to see what happens next for Winnie, and the mystery she must solve!