Gallant by V.E. Scwab
All her life, Olivia Prior has wondered who she truly is and where she belongs. Her only clue is a slim, battered journal. Her mother’s journal, full of entries that seem to show that she was unraveling and drawings that look like blots of ink… until Olivia notices a hand, a door, a bloom, a skull.
Then a letter beckons Olivia home - to Gallant. The one place her mother’s journal warns her never to go.
Olivia goes anyway. Of course she does. What she finds is her last living relative and her family’s manor. A manor with a ballroom and a sitting room and a study and a sprawling, vibrant garden - and the crumbling ruin of a garden wall with an iron door. A door she must never open.
But no one at Gallant sent Olivia that letter. And no one will tell her what haunts her cousin’s dreams, what happened to her mother, or what lies on the other side of the wall.
Did the shadows call Olivia home? What will they ask of her in return?
~~~~~
This story was a twisted dream full of wonder and horror alike and now I completely understand why it’s so hard to fit it into any specific genre. I will admit, although I loved The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, I missed Schwab’s darker more twisted writing style and this book brought it all back but with some added beauty reminiscent of Addie. It was like a mixture of those mysterious and magical books from childhood but with a more adult feel and it was a lot more creepy than I expected it to be. Somehow this book managed to incorporate some of my worst fears into the plot and it gave me major chills and I couldn’t put it down even when I tried. Think Secret Garden or Narnia but with a Haunting of Bly Manor vibe to it. It’s one of those haunting stories that just stick with you. I find that even days after finishing it, I can’t stop thinking about it.
This book has the feel of a YA novel due to the font, margins, length, and age of the main character (Olivia is still a school aged kid) but it reads like an adult supernatural/fantasy with small little tidbits of juvenile horror. The artwork throughout the book was such a wonderful touch. I felt like I was really flipping through Grace’s journal and I took a lot of time with each picture while reading, trying to find all the little things hidden within the inkblots. It’s a slow burning read but I binged it in two days. It just had such a great build to it and the characterization of our main character, Olivia, was spot on. A young girl, angry at the world but who still feels so much and wants only to belong. I think Schwab encapsulated what a lot of us outcast kids felt at one point in life or another.
The plot was so neatly wrapped into this stand alone book yet there were so many twists and pathways that the story could have taken. I loved that at the end of every chapter the possibilities of what could happen next were endless. Olivia was such a relatable character and I loved how Schwab made her perfectly imperfect. She felt so real that she became more than just a character on a page. And despite her mutism, her voice was the loudest of all the characters I’ve read from Schwab. The book is 95% inner dialogue and usually that means a slow read for me but Olivia’s viewpoint on life and the happenings around her were so fascinating that I felt like I really was in her shoes. To me, this was a disability done right. Olivia’s mutism wasn’t mentioned and then disregarded, it was a pretty main focus without it becoming WHO she was as a character. She didn’t have to “overcome” her disability to be an amazing character and I loved how natural and acceptingly that that was portrayed.
This book was a joy to read from start to finish and I wish I could have taken my time and basked in this hauntingly beautiful story for a while longer (I guess that’s what rereads are for huh?). This one was definitely 5 stars and if you’ve loved The Haunting of Bly Manor, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, The Secret Garden, or any of Schwab’s other works, you’ll definitely love this one.