Even though I didn't agree with quite a few of Dana's choices as a mother, I could definitely sympathize with her. I feel like Albert built her character out enough that it was easy to understand her motivations. RUTHLESSLY ENTICING, Our Crooked Hearts is a story about fierce magic and even fiercer young women. It caught me in its web and held on tight. This book pulses with a bewitching darkness, and I loved it. Kat Ellis, author of Harrow Lake Pulses with a bold, beguiling magic that feels brand new and classic at the same time. I couldn’t put it down." — Karen McManus, author of One of Us Is Lying At a stoplight he fumbled with his phone. For a few taut seconds I considered jumping out. Then he was off again, an old Bright Eyes song blasting and the wind tearing it into pieces. The music stuttered as he swerved onto the single-lane road that wound through the forest preserve. Trees closed in and my hair whipped to fluff. I closed my eyes. this book was so well thought out & the way it came full circle was So satisfying - i was literally jaw dropping when i realized what was going on. i honestly would read a whole series based on the characters in this book.

NO ONE WEAVES FAIRY TALE MAGIC INTO THE MODERN WORLD LIKE MELISSA ALBERT. A truly masterful tale . . . with all the trappings of a classic: immaculate prose, a parallel generational story for the ages, and chills when you least expect them. David Arnold, author of The Electric KingdomHe put a hand to his mouth. There was a stripe of white paint over his forearm. “Did he do that to you?” The gravity of Albert's prose in Our Crooked Hearts is inescapable. I love the glint and grind of its magic, its tangled inheritance, the sacrifices it demands, the bonds it makes and breaks. THIS BOOK WILL SWALLOW YOU WHOLE. Hannah Abigail Clarke, author of Scapegracers Part of why this section worked so well for me was the sense of place. My family is from Chicago, and the author has this incredible talent for describing the city in detail without info- dump. For someone unfamiliar with Chicago, it will create a strong atmosphere. For someone who knows it well, I had moments of “oh, yes, I know this street” and “oh I can almost smell the lake” and “oh I can imagine the food from this vendor.” My eye went to the darkened second-story windows. One of them lit up a minute later and I looked away, regret and bottom-shelf vodka muddling queasily in my stomach. Time to get in bed, I figured. Before my night found one more way to go to shit. Dana was raised by a single father in Chicago, her mother having died when she was a child. Her only friend is Fee, also being raised by a single father, her mother having died in childbirth. Their fathers co-own a fish fry place near the lake, and the girls start working there as young as eight.

None of the parents in this book can be described as good parents, but they also aren’t bad people. They are imperfect and passing down what is likely generational trauma. Our Crooked Hearts does a wonderful job exploring a gray area that reflects real life. Some parents, not out of malice, don’t know how to be parents which is still harmful to the child. That’s a hard space to navigate. I was breathing too fast. My vision sizzled, my head felt helium-light. Not because I was scared of what I’d dug up from the garden, but because I wasn’t. The discovery should have felt alien, appalling. It didn’t. It chimed in grim accord with the feeling I got when [my mother] arranged her hands just so, and the certainty I had glimpsed the rabbit’s tooth in her palm.The parallels between them both however is startlingly obvious and I loved that it’s their decisions (made decades apart) which ultimately bring them closer together. Ivy spends the first half of the book constantly searching for answers, about why her mum is distant and evasive, why the boy next door seems to hate her and why she feels like a piece of her is missing. Teenage Dana is likewise looking for meaning in her life, something bigger than herself in the life she shares with her temperamental father and best friend Fee. Ivy has always felt that something about her mother was “off,” and that something was buried deep inside herself. The next night she sees her mother bury something in the yard and digs it up later. It’s a jar containing herbs, paper and blood. She reflects: I thought Albert did a great job telling this story. There were a couple of aspects that lost me a bit, some scenes towards the end had a fever dream-type quality to them and that's not necessarily my favorite to see in a narrative. Now her mother and her favorite aunt are missing! The girl she has seen in the woods lurking around her house and the boy next door she has complex feelings insists she broke his heart five years ago. Could she forget something important like this? Haunting and beautiful, full of messy girls drunk on messier magic and told with electric prose brimming with sharp metaphors.” — The Bulletin (starred review, Blue Ribbon title)