Mary Hades

by Sarah Dalton

[Nessa Luna]

Read this review and more on my blog October Tune

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley, this has not changed my opinion on the book in any way.

I'd heard a lot of things about Mary Hades already and added it to my to-read list a while back. When I found it on Netgalley I immediately requested it, not at all thinking I would get accepted. But I did, and I added it to my 'to-read in February' list. It was the first book I started reading this month (okay I cheated, I started it on the 31st of January already), and I did enjoy it very much.

First of all, I must tell you - if you want to read this book, you should definitely read the novella - My Daylight Monsters - before this book, otherwise you'll probably be a bit confused at the beginning, like I was. So I quickly got myself a copy of the novella and read it before continuing Mary Hades and I have to say I understood everything a bit better after that. So: Read the novella first!

Mary Hades is about a girl, named Mary Hades (I LOVE that last name), whose best friend is a ghost. She is also seeing Things (that's literally what she calls them) who warn her about horrible things that are about to happen. Which is actually kind of a good thing, if the Things weren't so bloody scary. In this book, she's just come back from the psychiatric ward, where she met Lacey (aka her ghost friend, who wasn't a ghost back then), and her parents thought a little vacation might be nice. But what Mary doesn't know is that that vacation might turn into a nightmare.

I love books like these, books about ghosts and horrible things. That's why I read Miss Peregrine's (the pictures, ohhhh), Anna Dressed in Blood, Say Her Name, and also the initial reason I wanted to watch Supernatural. This book was a bit creepier than ADiB though, which I liked (honestly I didn't think that book and it's sequel, Girl of Nightmare were that scary). Anyway, back to this book: we meet some nice characters in this book; Seth, Neil, Lammar and Igor. I liked these characters, though some things in the book made me feel a bit conflicted about liking several of these characters. But hey, I liked the outcome of this book (okay not 100% but more like 80%)! The writing was done really well and I enjoyed reading it very very much. I thought to myself I wanted to check out more of Dalton's books, and not necessarily from this series.

As for the ghost, it was pretty scary y'all, I mean I could just imagine her as a creature on Supernatural and sometimes I actually got chills down my spine while reading this book. There were some minor things that I didn't really like - like the fact that you don't understand some things if you haven't read the novella, but that was soon solved - but they didn't really bother me that much. Why haven't I given the book five stars then? Well, a book has to completely (okay almost completely) blow me away to do that, and this book didn't really do that. I loved it, but it wasn't a 5-star love, alas. But that cover guys, wow! Fun fact, I read another book (totally unrelated) that had the exact same picture on the cover: To Know Me.

I will be reading the other two books in the series, and I will definitely recommend this book to people who want to read scary books about ghosts!

My opinion on this book in one gif: