Title: Other Words for Smoke
Author: Sarah Maria Griffin
Publisher: Titan Books
Publishing Date: April 2nd 2019
Goodreads blurb:
The house at the end of the lane burned down, and Rita Frost and her teenage ward, Bevan, were never seen again. The townspeople never learned what happened. Only Mae and her brother Rossa know the truth; they spent two summers with Rita and Bevan, two of the strangest summers of their lives... Because nothing in that house was as it seemed: a cat who was more than a cat, and a dark power called Sweet James that lurked behind the wallpaper, enthralling Bevan with whispers of neon magic and escape. And in the summer heat, Mae became equally as enthralled with Bevan. Desperately in the grips of first love, she'd give the other girl anything. A dangerous offer when all that Sweet James desired was a taste of new flesh...
Review:
This isn't the first time I've tried to read a book by Sarah Maria Griffin. I tried to read her other book, Spare and Found Parts, last year before going to see her at an author event. I didn't have time to read it however, and while I tried I couldn't fully connect to the main character. Going into Other Words for Smoke, I somehow knew that it was going to be different.
With the knowledge that it was going to be a female/female romance, I was excited to give it a try, because I think it's something we need to openly and happily accept in YA novels and also not make a huge deal out of it, and secondly, I wanted something that did it well. I don't know why I thought this book would, but I just got the feeling that this book was going to show sexuality well, and I wasn't entirely wrong.
The book has this subtle way of showing the magic. While there is definitely some form of magical force in the book, it's never a super obvious force that is in the very forefront of the story. The characters talk about it, and the author shows some things in the way of almost spells and other strange goings on, but it's not this big thing, we're not doing magic and making people float, and it's very much grounded in reality.
The book, I must say, is written so beautifully that it's unreal. Sarah Maria Griffin has this really nice way of making it sound extensive and clever and really vivid, without making it sound super flowery, which I think is a beautiful balance for a book like this. It's very interesting to see these snippets in footnotes where we get shown things almost from a different angle. It was just such a different way of writing that I really enjoyed and really found myself falling into the writing.
The other thing I want to say about this book, which I really enjoyed, was that it wasn't this big fight for good and evil type story. We did have really dark characters and really dark aspects to it, but it wasn't an end of the world type story. It all seemed contained within this one house and that though the stakes were high for some of the individuals from the house, it wasn't a big problematic plot.
Overall, this book is really well done, and I really thoroughly enjoyed it. I think the characters are really well developed, I think the plot is a really interesting glance into almost a slice of life contemporary with magic as this weird side venture. I am really interested in reading more from Sarah Maria Griffin, and I hope that I'm not disappointed in the future.
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