Cryer's Cross

I’m a fan of Lisa McMann’s Wake trilogy, they were some of the first YA books I read and I loved that her writing is very easy to get lost in, it flows easily and you can read her books really fast, most in just one sitting. I was happy to see that it hadn’t changed in Cryer’s Cross. I finished this book in a day, Lisa McMann doesn’t waste a lot of time with useless details, her books get to the plot of the story right away, and Cryer’s Cross didn’t waste time getting to the creepy parts.

I liked that it takes place in a very small town, I really enjoy those type of settings since I always lived in a big city I often wondered what a small town life would feel like. Even though I can’t relate to the farmer type of life that Kendall lives, I understood her ambitions very well. Unfortunately all of that comes to an end when her classmates begin to disappear, something unheard of in the quiet and small town of Cryer’s Cross and it made me feel so bad for poor Kendall when her little world starts crumbling down.

In between the chapters on Cryer’s Cross there were these very creepy lines from another source in the novel that made the reader very curious to find out who they were and how they were taking these kids. Those little snippets between the chapters made the novel much more creepier and me wanting to know more about them. Like I said this was a very fast read but by the end I had mixed feelings about it, I liked it but didn’t love it. I was a bit disappointed to see that the ending wrapped up way too easy, the climax of the story only took about two pages in the book and it left me wanting to know more about these “ghosts”, if that’s what they were. I still enjoyed it and I’ll definitely read more by Lisa McMann, because even though I didn’t love the easy ending I enjoyed about 80% of the book and Lisa knows how to write some pretty engrossing thrillers.

I don't know why I decided to read Cryer's Cross, it's not the sort of book I normally read and I was uncertain about whether or not I would even like it. Fortunately I did! I thought Kendall was an interesting character to follow, and the story was intriguing. When I first began it was a little bit slow and boring, but as I got to know the characters and the story developed I found myself more and more pulled in by it. The one thing that disappointed me, was I expected to be scared more than I was, there were definitely some scarily thrilling parts, but until the very end they were very tiny and barely fear-inducing. The biggest creepy part of the book, though, I loved! It was written in a way that had my heart pounding and I enjoyed every minute of it! All in all, I enjoyed this book and it's given me new incentive to read Lisa McMann's Wake Trilogy.

Reader reviewed by Lia

Cryer's Cross starts out with a girl who has just gone missing from a small town, throwing the whole town into chaos. After months of searching for the girl or any leads to what happened to her, the town starts going about their business again. Then another student disappears, Kendall's best friend Nico. After no traces of Nico are found, the town eventually also give up on finding him, But Kendall's OCD won't let her accept that her friend is simply just gone. She searches deeper and deeper to uncover what happened to Nico at the cost of losing herself.

Cryers's Cross is not only a mystery but it also has some supernatural elements that I wasn't expecting. This book was majorly creepy, especially the whispering desk with the "old new" creepy messages written on it. One aspect of the book that bothered me was that it was written in the third person point of view and in the present tense, it made the writing seem choppy somethimes. The plot though was good, as were the characters.