The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young

A woman risks everything to end her family’s centuries-old curse, solve her mother’s disappearance, and find love in this mesmerizing novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Spells for Forgetting.

In the small mountain town of Jasper, North Carolina, June Farrow is waiting for fate to find her. The Farrow women are known for their thriving flower farm—and the mysterious curse that has plagued their family line. The whole town remembers the madness that led to Susanna Farrow’s disappearance, leaving June to be raised by her grandmother and haunted by rumors.

It’s been a year since June started seeing and hearing things that weren’t there. Faint wind chimes, a voice calling her name, and a mysterious door appearing out of nowhere—the signs of what June always knew was coming. But June is determined to end the curse once and for all, even if she must sacrifice finding love and having a family of her own.

After her grandmother’s death, June discovers a series of cryptic clues regarding her mother’s decades-old disappearance, except they only lead to more questions. But could the door she once assumed was a hallucination be the answer she’s been searching for? The next time it appears, June realizes she can touch it and walk past the threshold. And when she does, she embarks on a journey that will not only change both the past and the future, but also uncover the lingering mysteries of her small town and entangle her heart in an epic star-crossed love.

With The Unmaking of June Farrow, Adrienne Young delivers a brilliant novel of romance, mystery, and a touch of the impossible—a story you will never forget.

The Reason

It’s a buddy read and it sounded interesting!

The Quotes

“You may have ruined my life, June. But first, you gave me one.”

“We stood there, four generations of Farrow women, cursed to live between worlds. But in that moment, in the valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains, we existed only in one.”

“I had only one ambition in my simply built life, and that was to be sure the Farrow curse would end with me. It was as good a place as any to end a story. I wasn’t the first Farrow, but I would be the last.”

My Thoughts

On the pacing
I didn’t know it was a time travel story when I picked it up! The description sure didn’t mention any of that, but I liked that it pretty much went quickly into the time travel storyline rather than keep us hanging. In fact, I think the thing I liked most about it is that things moved quickly and we get into the meat of the story immediately. I was slow to start the book but once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down and had to keep reading! I think if this was a slower-paced story I wouldn’t have liked it as much because a lot of things might not hold up very well if the author gave us more time to contemplate.

On the idea
I tend to give a lot of leeway to time travel stories for how they handle the paradox of the past affecting the future and all of that, and I love the way the author uses a different concept of time travel here and how she resolves the paradox.

On the characters
I don’t feel like the characters in the book were developed very well. Things moved too fast for us to get to know them deeply. We’re told, not shown, who the love interests are, who the good guys are, who the bad guys are. There’s no subtlety; they’re almost caricatures. And as I mentioned earlier, if this was a slower-paced story, I might hate that about the characters, but since it was so fast-paced, I just went with it and enjoyed the story for what it was.

On the story
Again, the fact that it was fast-paced helped to gloss over a lot of the things I feel are unresolved; details that I won’t mention here, but of the things that did get resolved, I do like how they got resolved.

Overall
I loved the pacing and the time travel idea. I really loved the story too, in and of itself. I think that the character development and connections were the weakest part of the book but easy to overlook because of the fast pace. However, I won’t dwell too much on that because if I do, I’ll start nitpicking and I don’t think I need to do that with this book. It’s good as it is and I enjoyed reading it very much!

My Rating

⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?