Thank you to the publisher, Wednesday Books, and Netgalley for providing me with an advance copy. And possibly one of my top five favorite titles for the year. Within These Wicked Walls is well-written, has unique and engaging characters, and a creative plot unlike anything I’ve read before. I was fully invested, unable to set the book down until the climatic end.īut go into this one with an open mind, not expecting a faithful retelling of Jane Eyre. While the book didn’t start as creepy as I’d hoped, the second half did not disappoint. But really the name was primarily all they had in common. I think something that might have hindered my initial enjoyment of the book was my expectations for the Rochester character. While I thought the romance was fast, I did enjoy their banter and chemistry. Andromeda is a fascinating character: her upbringing, her abilities, and her weaknesses. What I most enjoyed about this book was the world building and the characters that occupied that world. I still feel like the romance felt too instant, but as soon as I picked the book back up, there was a scene in the library that won me over to the story and the romance. I think my failed first attempt was a combination of things: I was distracted with wrapping up my yearly reading challenge (and this book was not one that would fulfill a prompt), the book wasn’t as creepy as I expected, and the romance was feeling a little too insta-love for me. Lauren Blackwood, Within These Wicked Walls

Everything had felt so real, now all reduced to the memory of a nightmare.” I decided to give it another chance, and I’m happy to report I read the rest of the book in one day. Of course as soon as I did that, all the positive reviews started coming in from my fellow bloggers and Reese Witherspoon chose it as her YA fall pick.

It wasn’t a decision I came to lightly as it would be my first DNF of the year. But after I read a third of the novel, I couldn’t seem to get into it and decided to give up, mark it DNF (did-not-finish), and move on. It sounded like the perfect creepy house tale I needed for my fall reading. When I originally heard Lauren Blackwood’s YA debut would be a Jane Eyre-inspired retelling, I was very much on board.

Within wicked walls