Small Favors

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What a frustratingly GOOD book!

Would I Recommend It?
Yes, to those who can stomach scary stories and don’t have imaginations that run too wild to give you nightmares.

It’s more a fairy tales monster characters fantasy than a fantasy-fantasy. 

Also, really? This is a YA book? Hmmmm… I suppose… bit dark. Bit bloody. Bit too much violence. Like I guess, in high school, I could see me reading it. Okay. But not younger than that.

Thoughts?
Wow, the bright sunny and buzzing with cute bees book cover will sure fool you into thinking this is a lighthearted story. Be warned, it is not.

I had one nightmare filled evening, that’s for sure. Erin Craig is really good with just planting that small seed of a scary idea and then she lets your own imagination run wild with it. At least mine did. I definitely dreaded the nightmares I’d have after what I read one evening.

As for the frustratingly good book comment. It’s one of those stories where she keeps leading you on. You think you know, but then you go and doubt yourself, then you know again, and then right back to doubt. The romance is the same tug of war. And it. Just. Frustrates you. Wonderfully. To the core.

I had a bit more of a grandiose idea for the ending. As in I thought Erin Craig would weave a bit more of a philosophical connection between monsters and Amity Falls villagers and scientists and religion and human nature and our environment. But she didn’t take that road. It felt at times she hinted that she may be going there, but it didn’t. At least I didn’t get the feeling in the end that it did. And this is okay, but if she would have then that would have catapulted my rating into 5 stars for me, easily.

I think there are some really good displays of human behavior. So many act without thinking. So many think that a higher being can fix it all just because they repent. No, people, when you’ve done something harmful it can’t just be wished and whispered away.

I liked that there is also a message of giving up and fleeing isn’t necessarily giving up. It’s just a way of self preservation. It’s okay to quit some things in life.

Overall, I really liked the book and am curious to read Erin’s Salt and Sorrows that many seem to rave about and are saying that it’s better than this book. Some are saying Small Favors is scarier. Others disagree. This seems to all play along with the theme of Small Favors–a tug of war of thoughts and feelings.

Stupid Insignificant Sidenote:
One fault of Erin’s writing and this is more author, Pataki’s, fault cause now the phrase “cocked her/his head” is like nails on a chalkboard for me. The first occurrence of it in Small Favors was nearly a 100 pages in. Which was absolutely fine. But then it happened again, and again, and again, and again. WHY?!? What is with cocking one’s head that once an author uses it becomes like a plague on the book and it repeats over and over? The phrase, however, was less of annoyance to me in this book versus in Sisi and Empress On Her Own. Erin also switched it up twice to “tilted head” perhaps being conscientious of it. So, really, just a personal pet peeve, but one to be fair to Pataki I had to point out Erin Craig also made the same blundering mistake.