This went places I did not expect. A great and often uncomfortable horror novel. I'm going to keep reading her. ( )

I enjoyed this book. It was gripping with some great twists. I thought the characters and their relationships were interesting. I did think the ending was a bit weak, with an unneeded twist that didn't make sense. Overall, I would recommend to someone wanting a book with dark complex female characters, or an interesting psychological horror. ( )

This was a weird story and I wasn't sure how Catriona Ward was going to bring it all together but she made it happen by the end of the book. I found it a little slow at times and I am still unsure who pale Callie is but the story was good overall. ( )

Okay I don't even know where to start with this book.

What didn't work for me: Holy Sweet Tea is everybody in this book fucked up. Name a personal problem and somebody's got it. More than a couple. The list of abuses is harrowing and some might say gratuitous but Ward's credit she always makes it work. There are significant bits about animal cruelty and experimentation that made it personally disturbing for me but that was the point. Also there were twists upon twists, so much so that I was expecting/anticipating more twists even though the book was chock full even up until the last page. The book within a book should have been cut, as it brought morning to the story. Not every twist worked for me but they were executed well.
Lastly I personally despise the 2 main tropes of this genre: All Men Are Evil and All Women Leads Hate Them and this story is bookended by both.

Now onto the good stuff of which there is plenty. Damn, Ms. Ward can write! Every so often I was blown away by the way she made complex metaphors flow right off the page. Deeply layered characters are rendered with such masterful skill that they feel like real, flawed and multifaceted people. You get the impression that Ward could write a whole book about any one of them and make it a page turner. Next, this work was incredibly creepy on a deeply psychological level. I felt unsettled every single chapter and that's not an easy task. Even the (to me) unlikeable characters had distinct and hypnotic voices which kept bringing you back for more. To make me want to spend time in their deeply disturbed heads? It's like a car accident that just gets more upsetting the harder you look but you can't help yourself.
Catriona Ward's SUNDIAL did things to my psyche and I'm too afraid to thank her for it.
Pick up this book. Then go watch Full House afterward. You'll need to. ( )

The description and the fact that the author's previous book was in my best of the year list for 2021 made me excited to read this book. My excitement began to dwindle within the first few chapters due to the slow pace and unlikable characters.

Rob is married to an abusive man with whom she shares two daughters. One of the daughters has strange mannerisms and frightening habits.

I understand there are a great many women who stay trapped in abusive relationships but Rob did not share any of the reasons a woman would usually stay. Rob has access to money and a car and a job and the ability to leave. Most abusers start out sweet as pie, but Rob's husband Irving was an obviously creepy person long before she married him and she knew it. By the time the reason for her marriage is disclosed the book is over.

Rob had a very unconventional upbringing but I will not go into detail because I don't think you are meant to know about it until the middle of the book, which was another problem for me. The pace is slow, and the book is made even longer by the fact that Rob likes to write stories, using the names of her family, which she will go back and change later. Rob is not a great writer so there was no enjoyment in being made to read her fantasy novel or whatever it is she is working on. At first I forced myself to pay attention to them in case there were important clues to why or how she got herself into this situation but after the third or fourth time these stories seemed to be an unnecessary interruption so I skimmed them. This book would probably have been better off without them since it would have been less long and drawn out and draggy.

You may enjoy it more than I did, but this one just wasn't for me.
I received an advance copy for review. ( )