Kerry's Reviews > The Unmaking of June Farrow

let me start by saying that adrienne young is a master of the Fall Vibe, and i do honestly really enjoy the quality of her writing and her ability to create a cozy-adjacent atmosphere. i ultimately felt lukewarm about spells for forgetting, and was hesitant to pick this up, but it was a botm pick (those add ons are so cheap) and it had such good reviews it felt like a low risk, high reward situation. there were aspects of this that i enjoyed and had fun with, and others that i didn't really like, which lead to an... interesting reading experience. at various points i was ready to give this 4 stars and at others i was fully prepared to give it 1 star, and i'm settling on two because there were things i really did enjoy, and i also think this was just the unfortunate case of severe mismatch between reader and book (which isn't something i'd know beforehand, because knowing would've just been spoiler city... not that i'm opposed to spoilers, but i agree with other reviews and this is probably best experienced knowing as little as possible).

it's hard to talk about this book without veering into spoiler territory, but i really enjoyed the first 20 or 25% of this a fair amount, despite not loving some bits (not super sure how i felt about the way the "illness" was talked about, and i didn't love all the stuff with mason, idk). things got wonky for me once june decided to step through the door, and a lot of that has to do with the setting and where the plot goes. i genuinely think young does a wonderful job with setting and making it feel real and lived in, it's just that i personally hate cozy and cozy-adjacent stories that take place in this particular sort of setting. i didn't know that's what was going to happen going in, so it's not like it's anyone's fault, but boy did i have a hard time suspending disbelief. besides that, i felt very lukewarm to bored by the romance (did they have chemistry??? i couldn't tell you) and some of the characters blended a bit together for me. much like spells for forgetting's a lot of drama for some apples, i felt like the way the mystery was handled was a lot of build up for something that ended in a fizzle. i think young's writing is very smooth and easy to read and has a lot of elements that makes the sheer amount of 5 star reviews i'm seeing make sense, it just so happens june farrow was a collection of things that didn't particularly work for me.

uh. anyway. for the more spoiler-y opinions: (view spoiler)[it's challenging for me to read a story set in the 1950s to begin with, but especially challenging for me to read one about romance and finding yourself or whatever set in the 1950s, especially when the story itself is so white. going from 2023 to 1951 and consciously choosing to stay there is a literal nightmare to me, and it was difficult for me to empathize with june and her choices because of it. this is very much a Me Problem tho, as someone who has never had any weird and bizarre nostalgia for the 50s. outside of my personal feelings about the setting, i really struggled with the curse itself, because i wanted more out of it. it's not explained at all how this curse came to be or why the farrow women specifically are affected by it, and there's very little understanding about it as a whole, which i found frustrating at times. it was also frustrating that so much of the story was driven by people choosing to withhold information from june even when she would ask a direct question. i thought the climax of all the small town drama was painfully toothless. (hide spoiler)] while i absolutely see where most people will love this, i can't really relate. oh well!