Releasing June 28, 2022 from Flatiron Books
This book. So much love. Our Crooked Hearts is in the running for my favourite book of the year so far.
I went into this one knowing nothing except that I’d liked Melissa Albert’s previous work (the Hazel Wood series). It’s a good one to experience without reading much in advance.
The basic setup is that Our Crooked Hearts follows Ivy, a teenaged girl in a modern suburb, and in an earlier timeline Dana, her mother, at age seventeen. In the first chapter, Ivy nearly hits a naked woman with her car — a mysterious woman who she realizes might be following her and stalking her mother.
Our Crooked Hearts is about witchcraft, magic, femininity, family, memory, and love. It’s a coming-of-age story, fantasy with a dash of horror, that asks: How much does a person’s memory shape their identity? How far can you go to protect someone you love, before you’re actually harming them? And what can you forgive?
Albert’s writing is equal parts beautiful, haunting, and witty. She wields metaphors like razors and plays (especially in the second half of the novel) with tense and point of view in a way that’s disarming and illuminating.
I loved everything about this book, and it’s one I know I’ll read more than once.
I’d especially recommend Our Crooked Hearts for fans of Claire Legrand, Laini Taylor, and Libba Bray.
Thank you to Flatiron Books for my review copy of Our Crooked Hearts.
Leanne Olson 
Leave a comment