Hemlock Falls isn’t your typical small town. You won’t see it on a map, and it’s surrounded by a dense and dangerous forest. A forest full of monsters beyond imagination. Despite her family’s disgrace, because of her father’s darkest secret, Winnie Wednesday desperately wanted to take the test and join The Luminaries, the heroes that hunt monsters in the night. But when Winnie enters the forest, she is the only one who can see the most dangerous monster.
I was very conflicted about the merits of this book. I wavered between two and three stars. I ultimately settled on three because the author tried to make something unique, and the bones (pardon my pun) are there. That being said, this is another one of those series that I won’t finish. I didn’t really see the point of naming the families after the days of the week. There was no real reason why one family was Wednesday, and another was Friday. The whole training bit reminded me of The Hunger Games when the tributes were showing off their abilities. Once the Luminaries were actually in the forest, doing what they were trained to do, the story was much more interesting. I do wish there was an explanation for why there were monsters in the forest in the first place.
The Luminaries is a Young Adult Fantasy and the first in a planned trilogy. This is the author’s first book since her popular The Witchlands Series. I recommend this to readers who enjoyed The Whispering Dark by Kelly Andrew, The Buried and The Bound by Rochelle Hassan, and The Poison Season by Mara Rutherford.