The Review – The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young (3.5/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Magical Realism
Length: 321 pages
Publisher: Dell
Release Date: October 17, 2023
ASIN: B0BP67CX8Y
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eBook Borrowed from Library
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
“In the small mountain town of Jasper, North Carolina, June Farrow is waiting for fate to find her. The Farrow women are known for their thriving flower farm—and the mysterious curse that has plagued their family line. The whole town remembers the madness that led to Susanna Farrow’s disappearance, leaving June to be raised by her grandmother and haunted by rumors.
It’s been a year since June started seeing and hearing things that weren’t there. Faint wind chimes, a voice calling her name, and a mysterious door appearing out of nowhere—the signs of what June always knew was coming. But June is determined to end the curse once and for all, even if she must sacrifice finding love and having a family of her own.
After her grandmother’s death, June discovers a series of cryptic clues regarding her mother’s decades-old disappearance, except they only lead to more questions. But could the door she once assumed was a hallucination be the answer she’s been searching for? The next time it appears, June realizes she can touch it and walk past the threshold. And when she does, she embarks on a journey that will not only change both the past and the future, but also uncover the lingering mysteries of her small town and entangle her heart in an epic star-crossed love.”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed a copy on ebook from my library.
Thoughts: This book starts out pretty slow and moves forward at a deliberate pace. It is a time travel story with a murder mystery woven in. I enjoyed this but didn’t love it. Previous to reading this book I had read all of Young’s other books: Fable series (loved it), Sky in the Deep (liked it), Spells for Forgetting (mediocre). This book is quite different from any of those books in that it features an older woman, is set in current (and past time), and features time travel…which is always an iffy topic for me.
The book is told from June’s POV. June has started hearing and seeing things which is a fate that plagues all the Farrow women. All the Farrow women eventually go mad and/or disappear. June has pretty much put her life on hold, just making it day by day and waiting for the inevitable to happen. After her grandmother’s death, June’s “episodes” get more frequent until she finds herself with a decision to make; go through the red door that keeps appearing or ignore it?
This book was set at a very slow pace. We follow June around in her rather mundane life as she experiences more and more strange things; usually involving her seeing and hearing things that aren’t there. I didn’t find June especially engaging. She plays things safe and has put a lot of her life on hold while she waits to go insane. Things do eventually start to get more interesting as June starts to do some digging to find out more about her mother who disappeared. Then a decision June makes mid-book makes the second half of the book feel quite a bit different.
The second half of the book is more of an unsolved murder mystery that June gets wrapped up in. This was a bit more interesting but I still struggled to engage with the characters and understand how the “curse” on the Farrow women really functioned. This is never explained well and you sort of just need to go with the flow.
Unfortunately, the whole “things not really making sense if you think about them too hard” is an issue I have with a lot of books that have time travel in them. Honestly, if I had known that time travel was the main premise of this story I probably wouldn’t have picked it up at all.
The writing is easy enough to read, it was just slow and the characters here were uninspiring. I did finish this because I was curious to see what choices June would make and curious to unravel the unsolved mysteries behind the murder mystery June gets pulled in to. So, I guess I finished it but just wasn’t super eager to pick this up and struggled to stay engaged at some points.
My Summary (3.5/5): Overall I didn’t think this was Young’s best book. I enjoyed her Fable series and Sky in the Deep a lot more. I feel like I haven’t enjoyed Young’s more recent books as much as her earlier ones. However, if a creepy haunted feeling story that turns into a strange time travel curse with a murder mystery thrown in sounds intriguing to you and you don’t mind a slow moving story, you might enjoy this one.
