Synopsis – On the edge of town a beast haunts the woods, trapped in the Gray, its bonds loosening…

Uprooted from the city, Violet Saunders doesn’t have much hope of fitting in at her new school in Four Paths, a town almost buried in the woodlands of rural New York. The fact that she’s descended from one of the town’s founders doesn’t help much, either—her new neighbours treat her with distant respect, and something very like fear. When she meets Justin, May, Isaac, and Harper, all children of founder families, and sees the otherworldly destruction they can wreak, she starts to wonder if the townsfolk are right to be afraid.

When bodies start to appear in the woods, the locals become downright hostile. Can the teenagers solve the mystery of Four Paths, and their own part in it, before another calamity strikes?

What happens when you find yourself being unable to pick up or stick with a book you know you will love, try picking up a book from a genre you have never or rarely read.

That is what led me to read The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman and I’m glad I did :).

Aside from a few booktubers I haven’t heard many people mention The Devouring Gray, however I liked what I had heard. I decided to pick it up on a whim due to it being on Kindle Unlimited and because for a while I had been struggling with finding something I wanted to read.

When I first started reading The Devouring Gray I found it slightly muddled and confusing to read as I didn’t quite understand what was going on, even with this I was still very intrigued to figure out what was happening as I still found the book a gripping and interesting read. Thankfully the muddled and confusing reading I experienced at the start didn’t last long as the more I delved into the story and characters the more I found myself loving the book.

What I found so satisfying about this book is the author approach to character development and how she builds the world around them. Gone are the teenagers of yester year whose emotions, attitude and decisions are hard to understand and somewhat unbelievable, the ones featured in this book have quite a lot of depth and relatable feelings towards a varied number of subject matters. While they sometimes make questionable decisions you still somewhat understand why they choose to do what they did, this is because of the emotional depth, understanding and tragic backstory the author has given her characters.

What makes this book so good doesn’t stop with its characters as the dark and creepy world the characters reside within is truly gripping. I constantly found myself wanting to know more and more about what was going on and the little secrets the small town held. Not only that but due to the way the author described and developed the world I found it very easy to imagine myself within it and experience what was happening.

After reading this book I decided to look up some other reviews / comments about The Devouring Gray and I noticed some people compare it book to some YA paranormal shows and while I can understand the comparisons, don’t let those comparisons determine whether or not you read The Devouring Gray. I have tried watching a few YA paranormal shows (e.g. Riverdale and Sabrina) and I haven’t liked any of them, I did however like Stranger Things. To me this book very much has its own identity and I believe making those comparisons doesn’t do the book any justice and show just how good the book is.

So, did I like The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman, yes very much so. While reading it I was constantly gripped and wanted to delve deeper into the world so I could figure out the hidden mysteries the author had laid out. I very rarely say this but due to the story, characters and the authors description of the world I would love to see this made into a tv series. If you like fantasy, YA or paranormal books then I would highly recommend you read this as I think it is a very underrated book and more people should read it.