J M Samland
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Gabriella is a sweet, if little naïve young woman who’s been hidden away from the wide world by her mother, Queen Venica of the Deadvale. But, for the first time, she’s been tasked with a quest – to head to the market town over the Crack, and fetch supplies. Everything seems to be going well, until a young nobleman notices her performing dark magic with an apple. The noble – Viscount Brynmor Highgate, Marquess of Melodis – asks Gabriella to help him with some negotiations; but when he reaches out to touch her, Gabriella pushes him away – and he falls down some incredibly steep steps to his death. Plagued by guilt, Gabriella decides she must take his corpse and ghost back to Deadvale, over the Crack, to resurrect him. What follows isn’t a strange love story – it’s a story of self discovery, of revelations, and of a young woman coming into her power.
Grave Mistakes is something of a paradox; the prose is distinctly modern, yet the spoken language is prosaic – bringing up images of Victorian literature. Although the novel is enjoyable, the conversations feel clunky and awkward – especially given the juxtaposition of the archaic and the modern. The language does, sort of, fit in with the period that Samland is trying to convey, but it also just makes conversations difficult to follow. It’s not smooth, with it occasionally feeling overly flowery and complex; as if Samland had a medieval thesaurus thrown at him while he wrote.
Questionable conversational language aside, Grave Mistakes is full of a wonderful, morally grey and diverse cast of characters. No one is as they seem, with their motivations often being not as they would initially seem. There’s substantial character growth for Gabriella and Brynmor, with each of them learning important lessons about the wider world as well as themselves.
S. A.
First published on Reedsy Discovery as part of their ARC program. You can read the original review here.
Grave Mistakes is available to buy from J M Samland’s website