3.5
Shallow Graves
ByPublisher Description
For fans of Holly Black and Nova Ren Suma, a gripping, hauntingly atmospheric novel about murder, revenge, and a world where monsters—human and otherwise—lurk at the fringes.
When seventeen-year-old Breezy Lin wakes up in a shallow grave one year after her death, she doesn’t remember who killed her or why. All she knows is that she’s somehow conscious—and not only that, she’s able to sense who around her is hiding a murderous past. In life, Breezy was always drawn to the elegance of the universe and the mystery of the stars. Now she must set out to find answers and discover what is to become of her in the gritty, dangerous world to which she now belongs—where killers hide in plain sight, and a sinister cult is hunting for strange creatures like her. What she finds is at once empowering, redemptive, and dangerous.
Tense, complex, and wholly engaging, Shallow Graves is a stunning first novel from Kali Wallace.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities273 Reviews
3.5
Kaylen K
Created 23 days agoShare
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“I read this book because I absolutely LOVE two other books written by Kali Wallace and I wanted more of that and …. While this book was mostly enjoyable …. It’s definitely not similar to her other two books that I love (Dead Space and Salvation Day.)
While this book wasn’t what I was looking for it was still an interesting and intriguing concept. It wasn’t super predictable but sometimes the twists or lots turns seemed …. Unnecessary.
It’s a quick read and pretty entertaining so for that I would encourage you to read it!
At the end the author explicitly explores feminine rage and I wish she had included that more throughout the book because the storyline, and FMC definitely was perfect for exploration of misogyny and feminine rage.”Potato
Created 25 days agoShare
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Serenity Lown
Created 3 months agoShare
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HM 🦋
Created 3 months agoShare
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“I read this book a few months ago and it still haunts me. I’m not a big horror book fan, and it seriously wasn’t even very scary. Something about the powers she has after waking up just stuck with me, and they journey she took to figure them out is even more ominous.”Krysta
Created 4 months agoShare
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“[sent to me by publisher for review]
Hm. What do I really think about Shallow Graves? I've been having a hard time coming up with exact thoughts because I'm not so sure I know exactly what happened.
There's a lot about this book that I liked, loved even. The cover is gorgeous. The writing itself is even more beautiful. There are tons of feminist undertones throughout the entire book. For example, The MC, Breezy, a bi-racial bisexual girl, comments on the way people treat girls after they are murdered/raped/etc:
"The more recent comments on the page had been memories, pictures, insults, rumors. Ran away with an older boyfriend, maybe she promised to love him long time, get it, it's just a joke, don't be so easily offended. Not saying she was a slut but, come on, you know how she was. She should have been more careful. Shouldn't have been drinking and wearing those clothes. Like anybody was surprised. Didn't her parents feel stupid for not knowing what she was like?"
Breezy's mom has kept her own last name even though she's married. Breezy had a huge crush on her mom's older friend, a successful physicist, Breezy's mom was a neuroscientist, and Breezy herself had the aspiration to become an astronaut. Science was never considered an out-of-reach career field. She had a ton of great, strong women and women of color- (Breezy's mother was white, her friend a woman of color) to look up to. In addition, it felt like most of the "baddies" definitely had some misogynistic viewpoints.
I also really enjoyed the fact that there was no true romance to be found in this book. While I'm tired of people complaining about there being "too much romance" in YA-lit, it's always nice to read a book with the absence of it. There are mentions of past relationships, crushes, and sexual interactions, Breezy doesn't meet the ~guy/girl~ of her dreams because it's simply not relevant.
The mood in this book can shift from eerie to somber to funny in a millisecond, and in a way that works. Breezy sees some stuff, man. She does some stuff, man. A year after being murdered, Breezy wakes up buried under a heap ton of dirt. Not deep enough that she can't claw her way out, though. And when she gets out- a man is there, and before she knows it- she kills him. And after she kills him, she can see his past murders. Remember them just as if she had committed them herself. But that's not all. She also now has the gift of sensing whether a person has killed someone or not. If they feel guilty about it. But she doesn't know quite what she is, and through trial-and-error she realizes she's undead. She also realizes how exactly she's killing these people. I loved seeing Breezy trying to get a grasp on who she now is and what her limitations are. She's scared out of her mind but she pushes through it. She just has to figure out what's next.
And this is where my issues with the book begin, really. Because I'm not quite sure we really get that answer. There's no real "plot" to this book. There's no real climax. It's just Breezy doing ____. Then _____ happens. Then ______. She meets _____. Does ______. Then ____ happens, and it just sort of... ends? There's talk of revenge, not falling in to some sort of "prophecy", but nothing really comes out of it. Some things are resolved but I just feel like I was left with more questions. I even went on Goodreads after finishing to check to see if this was actually supposed to be a series and not a standalone.
The thing is, not having a super-grand plot is never too much of an issue for me if you have a great set of characters, but this book falls flat in that aspect as well. The only character we really know much about is Breezy, but we meet so many other characters along the way in brief snippets of their lives but just don't really see anything really substantial about them. Not every single character is important enough to get real characterization, but it just felt odd we didn't really learn much about them at all.
The world building felt nonexistent. It felt like even the characters had no clue what sort of world they were living in. Breezy is on a quest to figure out why she is the way she is now and how to fix it. Once she discovers that she's not the only "monster" in this world and she meets others, she immediately begins to ask questions. Instead of giving straight answers they just talk down to her for not already knowing. What little answers they did give her weren't really all that helpful to her own situation. I get it. Breezy's different. But this just felt a little weak to me.
Overall, I did enjoy my time reading this book and I am very interested in seeing this authors next work. Solid 3.5.”
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