Other Words for Smoke

By Sarah Maria Griffin

Blurb: 
When the house at the end of the lane burned down, none of the townspeople knew what happened. A tragedy, they called it. Poor Rita Frost and her ward, Bevan, lost to the flames. Only Mae and Rossa, Rita’s niece and nephew, know what happened that fateful summer.

Only they know about the owl in the wall, the uncanny cat, the dark powers that devour love and fear. Only they know about the trials of loving someone who longs for power, for freedom, for magic. Only they know what brought the house tumbling down around them. And they’ll never, ever breathe a word.

Review:
Still in a slight reading slump, so I went into Waterstones to ask for a book recommendation. The woman recommended this book, overall it's unique and good.

It's basically about these non identical twins who go to their great aunts house and the girl that lives with her is sort of possessed to an extent. Basically, she feeds this wall that makes her feed him so she becomes more powerful magical wise. Her great aunt also deals with magic and is a tarot card reader.

When Mae and Rossa are stopping with their great aunt Rita, strange things happen, and Rita teaches Mae the tricks of tarot card reading. Mae also starts to fall in love with Mae, the twins always stop with their great aunt when their parents are having relationship problems.

At some point in the book it also refers to the past of the house, which gets mentioned further on in the book when Rita was still a child and the things that happened with her.

The relationships between the children are a bit touchy, and is quite normal between people their age especially when they are developing and trying to discover their feelings. It was quite nice for the friendships between them to change, it made the whole story of friendship seem more real.

The magic within the book is also unique, I've not read many if at all that have to feed a wall for magic things to happen. It's definitely worth the read just for the different story-line. The friendships are also something nice to read about as it's quite similar to what happens when there's family near the same ages as you.

There are a few twists within this book too which are really interesting to read. This book also contains LGBT content, it's nothing drastic and nothing detailed, it's just female on female love/crush.

I feel this book is worth the read if you wanting something different, unique, good friendships, and history on the actual things that happen in the house.

The reason I've rated it 4 stars is because the ending could have been a touch better and just there wasn't really much that happened throughout the book that made you want to keep reading especially in one sitting.

Favourite Character: Rita

Read: 28/05/19 - 04/06/19

4 stars out of 5

Written by Sammie