Lots of horror and fantasy packed into one small town. A review of Cicadas Sing of Summer Graves.

 If Cicadas Sing of Summer Graves isn't one of the prettiest titles, then I don't know what is. Now on to the review.

I lived in Arkansas for seven years, right next to a large lake. After reading Cicadas Sing of Summer Graves I realize I got out of Arkansas in the nick of time! I was always suspicious of that lake.  Even though there were snakey things and alligators in it, I swam there anyway because, like the people in Prosper, Arkansas, there wasn't much else to do. 

Everything is weird in Cicadas Sing of Summer Graves but in a good way. Telescopes watch characters, even turning by themselves to keep watch. An elderly man runs into the water every night and weeps. Another older man (how old? perhaps millennia old) makes grotesque fireworks. Flowers grow wherever one young woman goes. They even grow in her hair while she sleeps. A dead desiccated catfish on a bar's wall spits pearls occasionally. And there's a mysterious box that won't open. But there's more!

All the characters in Prosper, Arkansas, both alive and dead, have something strange and magical about them.  I have to admit that sometimes the strangeness became more than my suspension of disbelief could handle, but all in all it was an enchanting, and sometimes horrifying, read. And there were more bees than cicadas, but Bees Sing of Summer Graves doesn't have the same ring to it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks for allowing me to read and review Cicadas Sing of Summer Graves. Now I'm going to catch a catfish down at the creek to see if it spits pearls.

                          Beautiful cover There's a raccoon that lives under my house. It loves to crunch up dead cicadas and eat them. Not that this has anything to do with the book.